Gadgetory

it seems that each smartphone has a key selling point whether it be price camera battery life or in this case water resistance when smartphone producers choose to focus on a single element of the overall experience other corners can be consequently cut the Sony Xperia m4 aqua focuses on being waterproof but how will does it perform overall this is Bailey Stein with Android authority and this is my full review of the Sony Xperia m4 aqua the m4 aquas design is very similar to those of other Sony smartphones and that shouldn't come as a surprise Sony smartphone iterations are largely incremental when it comes to design and the m4 aqua is no exception the two glass panel certainly look nice although both are fingerprint magnets the devices plastic frame is kind of disconcerting and to me the O's out of place when combined with the glass construction the mix of premium peel and glass and cheaper feeling plastic is unsettling and makes the phone feel awkward in the hand the circular power button is positioned nicely although the volume buttons and SIM door flap leave little room to rest your thumb on the side of the phone the amount of ports camera buttons speaker grille and separate sim and microSD card flats all place on the frame is overwhelming there's a lot going on for a single frame and it's honestly kind of off-putting and takes away from the minimalism established with the glass panels on the positive side of things the phone is pretty thin and light at 7.3 millimeters and 136 grams the 2400 milliamp battery is not user replaceable and there is a notification LED to the left of the Sony branding on the front of the device in addition to that there's also a five megapixel front facing camera of course the m4 aqua is waterproof with IP 65 and ip68 certification sony says that the phone should not be underwater for more than 30 minutes nor should it be under a depth of one and a half meters the physical camera button also enables underwater pictures since you can't really use the touchscreen when it's exposed to water as long as you follow the instructions you can expose the phone to water without having to worry about damaging the five inch 720p display looks good with great viewing angles it is noticeably warm however and colors just aren't as vivid as they are on other devices in the same price category overall the display is good but not great day to day performance on the m4 aqua was pretty good and the two gigabytes of RAM was enough to run more than a couple of apps at once the phone is powered by Qualcomm's mid-range octa-core 64-bit Snapdragon 615 with four cores clocked at 1.5 gigahertz and the other four cores clocked at 1 gigahertz it's not as fast as flagship devices but it's certainly more than usable one area of concern is the devices heat output it's not as bad as the Snapdragon a 15 but the m4 aqua gets very hot when doing simple tasks like using the camera or downloading apps luckily the processor does slow down significantly before overheating but it still indicates a problem that Qualcomm has kind of just swept under the rug the Adreno 405 GPU handled gaming well and I didn't run into any issues with the exception of a surprisingly warm phone in addition to supporting cellular networks the m4 aqua also works with GPS 802 11 and Wi-Fi DLNA and Bluetooth 4.1 carrier compatibility varies from each model so be sure to check the frequency bands before purchasing for example my model only supports up to HSPA+ an AT&T although I was hoping for front-facing speakers given the devices dual front grills the m4 aqua has side firing audio it turns out that the bottom grille is just a microphone and the top grille is only used as an earpiece the audio output on the import equi is okay but the volume is on the quieter side and it just sounds tinny and distorted otherwise called partially hydrogenated oils on labels trans fats are used by companies because they give fruit a longer shelf-life enhance texture and stay solid at room temperature the 13 megapixel camera which I'm assuming is a Sony sensor took some nice-looking images it's a capable camera but I did notice that some images lacked punchiness the pictures were quite sharp and detailed however the camera app has a few modes one being manual which allows you to select the scene or adjust white balance Sony does offer additional camera modes which are available for download sony claims that the m4 aquas 2400 milliamp battery will last 2 days but that's not what I found in my testing when I ran my daily usage tests the phone lasted from about 7 a.m. to about 10:30 p.m. with just over 2 and a half hours of screen on time I cut the phone and standby for most of the day and telling the evening when I started to watch youtube videos and scroll through Twitter there are a few power saving modes in the settings which you'll likely end up using to extend the phone's battery life the software on the sony m4 aqua is a slightly skinned version of android 5.0 lollipop there are some great things about it like the ability to customize the quick toggles record a video of the screen something that usually requires routing and a small apps menu the UI for the small apps does feel a tad unpolished for some reason but the functionality can definitely be useful on the downside the default launcher does have a few issues and the phone does ship with some blow wear for example the hamburger icon in the app drawer is poorly placed it can sometimes get in the way when swiping right which is incredibly annoying and frustrating another negative point is the amount of blow wear on the m4 aqua haystacks avg protection and news from social life are only a few of the many mostly useless pre-installed apps luckily most of them can be uninstalled the Sony m4 aqua is available in black white or pink with 8 or 16 gigabytes of storage the 8 gigabyte model only has less than one and a half gigabytes of usable storage out of the box so you should really opt for the 16 gigabyte model if you plan on buying this phone although the phone isn't officially available within the US just the it can be purchased for around 350 from third-party resellers for that price the Sony Xperia m4 aqua is a tough sell well it does have a good display capable camera and water resistance there's just too much about the m4 aqua that prevents me from recommending it the design is inconsistent the processor has heating issues and the battery life just isn't as good as so many claims and while those compromises may have been acceptable two years or even a year ago the competition today is much bolder with options like the ACS zenfone 2 and Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 the m4 aqua is not only mediocre at best but also overpriced thank you for watching this video and please make sure to give it a thumbs up below if you found it helpful or informative also please make sure to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more content and feel free to leave a comment below finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage as we are your source for all things Android