Sony’s mobile division has treaded its way into the unknown with the Xperia X series. The X series is expected to bring back Sony’s glory days, that frankly, have been hard to come by in recent years.
The Japanese brand is no slouch in the market, but the implosion of Chinese brands, along with the surge in popularity of names like Samsung & Apple has taken the sheen out of their relevance.
So, is Sony right to put all its egg in one basket with the X Series? Well, for Rs 48,990, they’ll need more than just reinvention. They need a product that can hold its own and do justice to brand Sony.
The Xperia X was first seen at the MWC 2016 (Mobile World Congress) and truth be told, there wasn’t much excitement about what Sony had to offer. And now that the phone has finally come our way, we can’t help but wonder if Sony has managed to get over the rot that had set in.
The answer will become obvious in the coming months, but for now, all we can say is the competition is playing a whole different ball game than what Sony has got in its armoury.
The company has candidly admitted to the fact that “the competition was ahead of them when the Xperia Z5 was out last year, but more than the acceptance what we’d really love Sony to manage is give us a worthy product after a long hiatus.”
The Sony Xperia X takes forward Xperia’s unibody design language with slight tweaks. Design, camera and battery life have been the major focus on the Xperia X. And we’re intrigued to see what the image sensors have to offer.
Sony’s 23-megapixel rear camera along with a Sony Exmor sensor has been redesigned at the hardware as well as the software level.
This according to Sony provides faster auto-focus and allows for better low-light photography, something, that Samsung has managed impressively with the Galaxy S7 this year.
However, before we get to what’s under the hood, we’re afraid we have some bad news. The Snapdragon 820 powered Xperia Performance is not India bound anytime soon. Instead, you get the X with a Snapdragon 650 processor, the same as what Xiaomi is able to offer on the Redmi Note 3, for a fraction of Sony Xperia X’s price.
This, however, as highlighted by Sony, will not be a problem. We hope consumers are willing to accept that as well.
Apart from this, you will also have to contend with the Xperia X’s susceptibility to water damage as it lacks durability.
The NFC sensor is now next to the front-facing camera. And due to this, users risk damaging the camera while connecting two devices together.
We asked Sony to change the position of the NFC tag and will update the article with their response.
The use of a 1080 pixels display for a flagship-level phone might be unacceptable, but there’s much to like about the clarity and sharpness of the Bravia engine display used by Sony for the Xperia X series.
We still can’t delete the unnecessary apps from the phone (only disabling works) and that’s not cool on Sony’s part.
Sony is desperate to show that it means business with the new Xperia X, but for what it’s worth, we need some clarity as to which section of the Indian consumer they want to focus on. For now, Rs 48,990 just doesn’t fill us with enough confidence to suggest that the turnaround in near for them.
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