Thursday, May 14, 2015
Dubai: Sony’s Xperia E4 Dual is an entry-level budget smartphone and worth the money. It is not a powerhouse but can perform decently.
The five-inch IPS LCD display has 960 x 540 pixels resolution and is powered by MediaTek 1.3GHz quad-core coupled with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage capacity. Out of the 8GB, only 4.78GB is available for users. The storage capacity can be expanded up to 32GB via micro SD. It runs on old KitKat version.
The screen quality is OK while the colours are vibrant and natural. The design is quite different from the usual Xperia models with curved edges.
To insert the dual SIM and the micro SD card, the phone has to be opened from the edge of the screen. The back shell is made of textured plastic but it is sturdy and bulky.
The phone is definitely not lacking on the software side but a Lollipop update seems unlikely.
Sony is using the same user interface for all its products, whether it is a smartphone, tablet or television. The common apps are Walkman, album, movies, PlayStation and Sony Select (Sony’s appstore).
The Walkman player offers ClearAudio+, which produces the best audio quality depending on the song. The sound enhancements settings have an equaliser with presets and manual settings to tweak bass. The Surround sound mode imitates the studio, club or concert hall experience.
Then there is Clear stereo mode, Clear Phase for adjusting the quality while xLoud boosts the internal speaker. The audio quality produced by the device is decent not extraordinary.
The Movies app is connected to Gracenote, which helps to find additional information about the movies and TVs you have on the phone.
The 5MP rear camera with single LED flash is capable of recording Full HD videos at 30 frames per second.
The picture quality of the device is not that great even in bright sunlight and suffers very badly in poor light conditions. There is lot of noise and artefacts when shooting in lowlight conditions.
The E4 offers different shooting modes like Augmented Reality, Social Streaming and YouTube live streaming, Timeshift which capture’s 30 shots in two seconds, Sweep Panorama, Creative effect and Portrait retouch.
The HDR mode is present on the device but it is hard to find. For that, you need to go to the manual mode first and then select Scenes selection. Then activate the Backlight Correction (HDR) option.
The 2MP front-facing camera is capable of recording 720p videos. The image quality and the colour look washed out. It is worth for video chatting.
Sony has bloatware of apps but has added some useful apps for daily use. The Office Suite for creating, viewing and editing office files, and read PDFs.
The Sociallife app gives lots of preloaded feeds of newspapers globally. The Xperia Lounge app gives users the opportunity to participate in various Sony promotions and win prizes.
Another interesting app is the PartyShare. It turns the device into a multimedia hub. The music and photos saved in this app can be shared with everyone at the party and saved on their devices also.
It supports dual-SIM (GSM+WCDMA), WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, USB, GPS and FM Radio.
The 2,300mAh non-removable battery provides two days of use for moderate to heavy users and Sony has included Battery Stamina and Ultra Stamina modes to extend the battery power. It can easily give more than three days for light users.
In video playback test, the battery stood close to nine hours and more than 16 hours of internet browsing, which is pretty good. It is priced at Dh549.
By Naushad K Cherrayil Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2015. All rights reserved.
