Gadgetory

the Sony Xperia Z is dead long live the sony xperia x hello they might have scary Sims from Andrew authority now Sony has been making flagship phones is Xperia Z range for a number of years however that range is now gone the way of the dodo and its place we had the xperia x range now today the Xperia X range has three phones Xperia XA the xperia x performance and the Xperia X now anybody who's familiar with the Xperia z5 will be instantly familiar with the Xperia X as it borrows a lot of the same design language even a quick glance at this phone will just tell you that it's quintessentially a Sony looking at the right-hand side of the device you find the familiar Sony button layout starting with the big power button in the middle which also incorporates a fingerprint reader then the volume rocker and then the dedicated camera key on the left hand side you have the SIM tray at the top you have the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack at the bottom we have the microUSB port on the front there is a five inch full HD display plus the front-facing camera and on the back we have the Xperia logo an LED flash and of course the 23 megapixel rear facing camera now why the xperia x borrows a lot from the experience at five it does add some of its own unique design elements for example there's now curved glass on the front the corners are more rounded and there's some curves on the edges when it comes to the internals of this phone sony has made a bit of a strange decision because it taxed the qualcomm snapdragon 650 are not the cork on snap dragon 820 if you're after an 820 you need to go to the xperia x performance so what is the Snapdragon 650 well basically it's a hexa core CPU with two cortex a 72 cores and four cortex a53 cores they clocked at a maximum 1.8 gigahertz and backing this up you have the Adreno 510 GPU and 3 gigabytes of RAM the standard single sim model comes with 32 gigabytes of internal storage which can be expanded using the microSD card you also get all the normal bells and whistles including GPS and see Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and of course 4G LTE now while I'm talking about NFC Sony have made a bit of a strange decision of putting the NFC detector on the front of the phone which means that when you want to pair it with another phone to copy over a photo or something you have to put the front of the Sony to the back of the other phone and that can create lots of Mis read on the screen and I actually found it quite difficult to get the alignment just right as for sound the xperia x features dual front-facing stereo speakers meaning the sound is unobstructed when you place the phone on a flat surface and the sound is always projected directly upwards and outwards the speakers can get quite loud and placing it on a flat surface actually seems to boost the sound somewhat there are a number of audio settings that you can use to improve the sound quality including dsee HX clear Audio plus and a dynamic normalizer there is also a manual mode which allows you to enable the equaliser will activate various surround sound options including s force front surround when it comes to the battery the sony xperia x packs a two thousand six hundred and twenty milliamp hour unit my initial charge from when I took it out of the box lasted just over two days but I must admit I didn't really use it much in the first day and during that charge time I got 4.5 hours of screen on time the next charge gave me 5.5 hours of screen on time with a mixture of web browsing YouTube navigation 3d gaming and 2d gaming what this means is that with moderately heavy use you'll be able to get a full day of battery life and this can be improved even further by turning on some of the power saving features according to Sony's website the xperia x supports quick charge 2.0 which means that the phone can be charged relatively quickly up to that 80% level however the charger that came with my reviewing unit was not quick charge 2.0 compatible using the supplied charger it took one hour and 15 minutes to charge from 5% to 75% in terms of general performance the Snapdragon 650 provide a snappy experience the UI is smooth and there aren't any noticeable lags the gaming experience is also very good in fact the xperia x scores an impressive 59 point 5 frames per second on epics is a bill in its high quality mode and 58 frames per second in the ultra high quality mode and for those of you like benchmarks the device managed to score 70 7306 in antutu 1442 in geek benches single core tests and 3,800 in geek benches multi core tests the Xperia X comes with a 23 megapixel Sony Exmor RS sensor a wide-angle 24 millimeter G lens and support for low-light photography at ISO 12800 the camera on the Xperia X is good it's not the best but it's good although the camera has a 23 megapixel sensor it's set to 8 megapixels in 16 by 9 by default sony enthusiast will tell you this gives you the best results because it uses super sampling now these pictures that I'm showing you include pictures taken in 8 megapixel mode in 20 megapixel mode and in 23 megapixel mode as you can see in good daylight the camera works well and there are little to choose between the 20 megapixel and the 8 megapixel images oven of course the resolution however you will notice that some pictures are dull and seem washed out take particular notice of the sky it's meant to be blue where they're using HDR does improve the washed out sky problem but also no it does change the overall colors of the pictures in low-light situations the camera tries very hard to produce a good shot or although the levels of noise do go out and you'd be expected the overall results are actually quite good the Xperia X also features Sony's predictive hybrid autofocus in a nutshell you tap on an object in the frame and if it moves like a kid or a dog then the Xperia X uses object tracking to keep that object in focus while there is no 4k recording the xperia x does support 60 frames per second while recording in full HD there has been some concern about the sony xperia overheating while recording video when I first use the camera app I saw a warning message which said if the temperature as Rises the app may close during use your recording will be saved automatically to see if the Xperia X has an overheating problem I started to record a full HD 60 frames per second video and set the camera on top of a jar just to see how long it would record for everything went okay until about the 18 minute mark when a warning was displayed camera will now turn off to cool down which it calls it probably did on the plus side the bundled camera app is actually quite good along with a semi manual mode there is lots of additional modes including AR mode which can superimpose computer-generated scenes like dinosaurs and fish onto your photos and videos an AR mask mode to mask your face with different generated masks and a time shift mode which recorded a high frame rate and applies slow motion one problem I have with the bundled camera app is it seems the only way to enable HDR is to use the semi manual mode and even then its buried away in the settings menu and isn't an onscreen control the upshot of this is well for me at least that the semi manual mode became the equivalent of HDR mode if I wanted to HDR then I switched to semi manual if I didn't les switch back to full auto in terms of software the xperia x comes with Android 6.0 marshmallow along with a light skin on top of the stock Android UI it also includes extra features and Sony related apps as well as a software for merging at the fingerprint reader there is a myriad device connection options including the ability to wisely play content from your Xperia x2 other Sony devices there's also a theme library with some free color based themes that matches the phone colors along with a theme store full of both free and paid themes under the battery settings there are two different power saving modes available stamina mode and ultra stamina mode we have stamina mode enabled then GPS vibration image enhancement etc are restricted to reduce battery consumption also background data is restricted again to save battery with ultra stamina mode enabled your data connection both Wi-Fi and cellular is disabled and the home screen switched to the ultra stamina mode home screen which includes access to only a you apps basically the phone contact messaging camera and a clock so the xperia x is available right now in the UK and in Europe for four hundred and fifty nine pounds 99 or four five hundred and eighty nine euros it also be coming to the USA on the 26th of June where it'll cost around five hundred and fifty dollars off contract now those prices are actually higher than what you can probably pick up an LG g5 or a samsung galaxy s7 however if you find one on contract maybe you'll get a good deal through your carrier if you're a Sony fan or you already have an experience and you want to upgrade that I really can recommend the xperia x however really the flagship device is the xperia x performance however the pricing of the xperia x off contract is actually quite high my name's Gary Sims from Andrew aura T and I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please do give it a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe don't forget to download our app and don't forget to visit Andrew 30.com because we are your source for all things Android