It's been a busy old year for Sony Ericsson. As it struggles to regain a foothold in the market it was once sucha major player in, it's been firing out more Android-based Xperia smartphones than long-lost relatives on an episode of Jeremy Kyle. And they're not half bad either.
The Xperia Arc has been the flagship of 2011's bunch. Arriving in the spring, it became the skinny poster girl for the Swedish-Japanese hybrid, showing off its amazing screen presence with the help of the Sony Reality Display (the bit that reproduces colour on the screen and makes it look great) but in the Xperia Ray, Sony Ericsson has gone for a smaller model
Before we go any further, there is one point we have to make clear: this phone is small. And thin. Think smaller and thinner than you expect, then shave a bit more off your dimensions. That's what you get.
The Xperia Arc (we're going to be making lot of comparisons to the Arc in this review) is 125 x 63mm with a depth of 8.7mm. The Ray slices most of that off and comes in at a remarkable 111 x 53mm. It is slightly fatter, by less than a millimetre, clocking in at 9.4mm deep.
It reminds us very much of the original (and, at the time, revolutionary) HTC Touch Diamond from 2008 – a niche handset that only retro phone geeks are likely to recall.
Indeed, compared to the larger handsets we've become used to using, such as the Samsung Galaxy S2, Apple iPhone 4 and HTC Sensation, this really does feel teeny and we couldn't stop picking it up at first.
But it is no slouch. Under that hood, you'll find a not-too-shabby 8MP camera with HD video recording, Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, HSUPA/HSDPA and 1GHz processor.
The Ray sits comfortably in the hand, and at 100g, you'll barely even notice it's there. Indeed if ever there was a candidate for a 'going out phone' that would slip unobtrusively into a pair of skinny jeans, this is most definitely it.
The rear has a matt finish that's only broken up by the camera lens and flash, plus a speaker near the bottom, crowned by a Sony Ericsson logo.
Around the side, there's little to comment on. The left has only a micro USB socket for charging/syncing, while the left houses a volume rocker.
Up top, you'll find little of interest other than a (thankfully easy to hit) power/sleep button and the 3.5mm socket for headphones of your choice.
The front is fairly minimalistic, made of a large sheet of glass broken up only by an earpiece and a physical Home button. The other two buttons that serve as Back and Options are both touch-sensitive jobs and, unfortunately, not as sensitive as we'd have liked.
The Xperia Arc has been the flagship of 2011's bunch. Arriving in the spring, it became the skinny poster girl for the Swedish-Japanese hybrid, showing off its amazing screen presence with the help of the Sony Reality Display (the bit that reproduces colour on the screen and makes it look great) but in the Xperia Ray, Sony Ericsson has gone for a smaller model
Before we go any further, there is one point we have to make clear: this phone is small. And thin. Think smaller and thinner than you expect, then shave a bit more off your dimensions. That's what you get.
The Xperia Arc (we're going to be making lot of comparisons to the Arc in this review) is 125 x 63mm with a depth of 8.7mm. The Ray slices most of that off and comes in at a remarkable 111 x 53mm. It is slightly fatter, by less than a millimetre, clocking in at 9.4mm deep.
It reminds us very much of the original (and, at the time, revolutionary) HTC Touch Diamond from 2008 – a niche handset that only retro phone geeks are likely to recall.
Indeed, compared to the larger handsets we've become used to using, such as the Samsung Galaxy S2, Apple iPhone 4 and HTC Sensation, this really does feel teeny and we couldn't stop picking it up at first.
But it is no slouch. Under that hood, you'll find a not-too-shabby 8MP camera with HD video recording, Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, HSUPA/HSDPA and 1GHz processor.
The Ray sits comfortably in the hand, and at 100g, you'll barely even notice it's there. Indeed if ever there was a candidate for a 'going out phone' that would slip unobtrusively into a pair of skinny jeans, this is most definitely it.
The rear has a matt finish that's only broken up by the camera lens and flash, plus a speaker near the bottom, crowned by a Sony Ericsson logo.
Around the side, there's little to comment on. The left has only a micro USB socket for charging/syncing, while the left houses a volume rocker.
Up top, you'll find little of interest other than a (thankfully easy to hit) power/sleep button and the 3.5mm socket for headphones of your choice.
The front is fairly minimalistic, made of a large sheet of glass broken up only by an earpiece and a physical Home button. The other two buttons that serve as Back and Options are both touch-sensitive jobs and, unfortunately, not as sensitive as we'd have liked.
Inside, you'll find 1GB of memory – although only 300MB is available to the user – and a slot for swapping microSD cards. You only get a 4GB card in the box compared to the 8GB the Xperia Arc ships with, which seems a little tight. But considering how cheap memory is these days, we'll not hold it against Sony Ericsson too much.But here's an issue: the memory isn't hot swappable. Seriously, Sony Ericsson – is that too much to ask in the year 2011?
The handset is available in a number of colours, including gold, black, pink and white, catering for all members of fashion crowd, apparen
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray's screen is the same resolution as the Xperia Arc's amazing display, which means 480 x 854 pixels. But it's a lot smaller, at 3.3 inches, compared to the Xperia Arc's 4.2 inches, which means a much higher density.
Don't underestimate this – when you look at the Xperia Ray's display, you will not believe how clear it is. Put it next to an Apple Retina display and you'll notice there isn't much in it.
Colours on the whole look fantastic, although we were disappointed with the quality of our blue sky wallpapers, which looked a lot more washed out than they did on the Samsung Galaxy S2. Plus the clarity is incredible.
We did find that we often had to tap a button or function again because the first go didn't register. We had the same issue with the soft keys. It wasn't a deal breaker, but it was unresponsive enough for us to notice and get slightly frustrated.
specs Xperia ray
| General | 2G Network | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
|---|---|---|
| 3G Network | HSDPA 900 / 2100 - ST18i | |
| HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 - ST18a | ||
| Announced | 2011, June | |
| Status | Available. Released 2011, August |
| Size | Dimensions | 111 x 53 x 9.4 mm |
|---|---|---|
| Weight | 100 g |
| Display | Type | LED-backlit LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 480 x 854 pixels, 3.3 inches (~297 ppi pixel density) | |
| Multitouch | Yes | |
| Protection | Scratch-resistant glass | |
| - Bravia Mobile engine - Touch sensitive controls - Timescape UI |
| Sound | Alert types | Vibration, MP3 ringtones |
|---|---|---|
| Loudspeaker | Yes | |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes |
| Memory | Card slot | microSD, up to 32GB, 4GB included, buy memory |
|---|---|---|
| Internal | 1 GB (300 MB user available), 512 MB RAM |
| Data | GPRS | Up to 86 kbps |
|---|---|---|
| EDGE | Up to 237 kbps | |
| Speed | HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.8 Mbps | |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot | |
| Bluetooth | Yes, v2.1 with A2DP, EDR | |
| USB | Yes, v2.0 microUSB |
| Camera | Primary | 8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality |
|---|---|---|
| Features | Geo-tagging, face and smile detection, touch focus, image stabilization | |
| Video | Yes, 720p, video light, check quality | |
| Secondary | Yes |
| Features | OS | Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread), planned upgrade to v4.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Chipset | Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon | |
| CPU | 1 GHz Scorpion | |
| GPU | Adreno 205 | |
| Sensors | Accelerometer, proximity, compass | |
| Messaging | SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push email, IM | |
| Browser | HTML, Adobe Flash | |
| Radio | Stereo FM radio with RDS | |
| GPS | Yes, with A-GPS support | |
| Java | Yes, via Java MIDP emulator | |
| Colors | Black, Gold, White, Pink | |
| - SNS integration - MP4/H.263/H.264 player - MP3/WAV player - TrackID music recognition - SensMe - Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk - Document viewer - Voice memo - Predictive text input |
| Battery | Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh | |
|---|---|---|
| Stand-by | Up to 430 h (2G) / Up to 440 h (3G) | |
| Talk time | Up to 6 h 50 min (2G) / Up to 7 h (3G) | |
| Music play | Up to 36 h |
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