Although I enjoy my life with iPhone 4S (and it's unimaginable to live without it..), Sony's new Xperia design has drawn my attention.
Sony used to be a leader of cool gadget design. Their design had a futuristic geeky flavor but at the same time minimal, and well-organized. On top of that they had a leading technology.
But Sony in recent years seems to be loosing it's orientation, and their design once sophisticated has become boring and once geeky has become pointless.
The design of this phone is kind of reminiscent of old Sony design. Especially that transparent line reminds me the joy of decorative minimal design.
The body of Xperia S has a nice matte finish coating, which make fingerprints less noticeable.
Back side of the phone is gently rounded.
Hardware side buttons are made of metal which is a kind like iPhone, but have slimmer shape.
You can create and edit your own equalizer setting on your phone, clear base sound, clear stereo, virtual surrounded technology, sound emphasizer xLOUD... these are what Sony says I don't know what they exactly mean, but IT JUST SOUNDS NICER THAN iPHONE and iPOD.
In the lockscreen you can switch Clock to a music player by a single swipe.
12M pixels camera (and 30 fps HD 1080p video) is the highest resolution of all smartphones, but there are a lot more practical features in this camera.
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| Continuous auto-focus, face-recognition and shake correction unleash the capacity of full HD |
All 5 lens are AR-coated on both sides to prevent the reflection of light. The lens filter also reduce the reflection as well as color unevenness.
1.3M pixels photos and HD 720p videos can be captured by front camera.
"A single key press takes you from sleep to snap in just over a second." It take about 1.5 seconds according to Sony Japan website and shoot interval is about 0.5 second.
Display is significantly improved from Xperia arc, the previous series released a year before Xperia S.
Screen size is increased from 4.2 to 4.3, resolution is from wide VGA (854 x 480) to HD 720p (1280 x 720).
Sony just announced new models at mobile world congress which look almost identical to one another. It looks like all Sony's next generation models will have single letter names and Floating Prisms.
Xperia P has an all aluminum body and U has exchangeable bottom caps. P has a white magic display, which add extra white stripe to RGB, but has only HD screen. U has a cute gimmick in Prism which illuminates to match the colour of photos viewed in the gallery or the album art of music tracks currently playing, but it has an only 5 pixel camera.
Meanwhile in Japna, waterproof Xperia, acro HD will be released for Docomo, which has almost same spec as Xperia S but looks more (or just) like Nokia Lumina 800.
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| Xperia acro HD (will be released in Mar, 2012) |
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| looks exactly the same lol |
I'm not here trying to say Sony had been a copy dog for the design of this phone. Both of these phones are designed in North Euro, so it is likey the same designers are involved in both products, isn't it.
Xperia S's transparent line reminds me the joy of decorative minimal design, and that has been long forgotten mainly because of Apple. Apple's design is simple and genuine, and never put what we can call decoration except "bitten Apple". It somehow has become dull and bland enough that can be dubbed as a safety choice, not something that buying the one send a message.
But what makes iPhone so successful is the integrated user experience from iOS5 to iTunes to the incredible app store that seaming-lessly work together.
It's good to have two different styles of smartphone design, but with that regard iPhone is one or two steps forward to Sony and a bunch of other Android phones that few people can differentiate.
It's good to have two different styles of smartphone design, but with that regard iPhone is one or two steps forward to Sony and a bunch of other Android phones that few people can differentiate.
