SONY Xperia L Brief Review

Introduction

Sony Xperia L is a mid-range offering from the japanese juggernaut Sony,the phone costs around $290 internationally and rupees 28,999 here in Pakistan.With many other manufactures trying to take over the mid-range android market,does Xperia L have a chance to with-stand its competitors,lets find out

Design and feel 

Xperia L is one of the most sexiest smartphone you'll find in its price range.The elegant curved design not only makes it look like a unique device but also gives a tight grip in the palm.

The curved design also makes it a pretty slim device around the middle part.The 4.3 inch tft lcd touch screen is located on the front side of the smart phone.The screen is neither too small nor to big and can easily go into the pocket.It is fairly bright and vivid and performs nothing more than a decent display.Above the screen you get your front camera (vga) and your proximity sensor below the screen you get the main microphone.

At the bottom side of the phone the LED notification strip is located which is the distinctive mark of xperia 2013 line-up.On the right side the camera shutter key,volume rockers and he power key is located and on the left side only the usb port is present.The primary camera along with the LED flash and secondary microphone  is located on the back side,the primary speaker is located at the bottom. 

The premium aluminum details are another thing to point out when using the Xperia L.These details are located near the camera lens,the power lock key and between the smartphone.It is to be noted that the build quality is far better than most of samsungs mid-range offerings,the back cover is made of high quality plasitc and feels very good in the hand.

Performance and specifications

The Sony Xperia L houses a dualcore Qualcomm snapdragon s4 cpu chipset (msm8230) clocked at 1ghz,Adreno 305 gpu (256 mb,open gl 3.0).Performance wise the smartphone is very snappy.It handles all tasks from opening up applications to playing intensive 3-D games like real racing 3,shadow gun dead zone,dead trigger and temple run 2 (all games were test on the highest settings) everything is smooth,even with a live wallpaper we did'nt notice any sorts of lag,multitasking was instantaneous thanks to the 1gb ram.

The benchmark scores were pretty average like some were pretty high other were just normal.We tested out famous benchmarking applications like Antutu,Quadrant,Nenamark 2 and geekbench.

Antutu score varied from 9600-11000 (note that we tested antutu without sd card)  

Antutu Benchmark

In Nenamark 2 the smartphone scored a perfect 60fps score 

Nenamark

Quadrant and Geekbench 2 scores was pretty close to the quadcore Htc one x

GeekBench 2

Quadrant

UI (user interface) 

Xperia L is currently running on Android 4.1.2 with sonys own custom UI and thanks to the good old project butter,everything is silky or should I say buttery Smooth

U1

UI

  

Most stock android applications have been replaced with sony's own custom applications like the ALBUM and the WALKMAN application which replace the stock gallery and the google play music application and offer more functionality  

Album

Music Player

Led Strip

Now lets talk about the led strip.The Led strip is located at the bottom side of the smartphone and works as a notification led but it also displays the most matching color in the picture or the album art 

Led Strip

The led strip is very bright well not as bright as the one on Xperia sp but handles the job very well.

The software is pretty close to the one on xperia Z but things like small apps,superior camera mod and bravia engine 2 aren't present here,although sony promised that xperia L users will get them soon,for the time being it'll be counted as a con.



CAMERA 

Note that this phone is advertised as a camera phone rather than a normal smartphone,the camera supports a variety of shooting modes,effects and options 

Camera

Camera

Snapshots

Snapshots captured with the camera were surprisingly detailed,vibrant and offered rich colors 

  the camera also offers the HDR mode which is used to capture large scale images though the hdr shots offered more fuzziness than detail but still offered good looking images  

Conclusion 

SONY xperia L is perfect for those who cannot afford a $500 smartphone or those who dont need a highend smartphone but just want a device for everyday use and a phone that offers a great camera,the benchmark scores pretty much prove that it can handle gaming easily and the performance is a plus point for a device in this range although we wished that sony would had included a little more to the phone like software goodies from the highend brother otherwise xperia L is a must have device if you're confused in getting a mid-end phone

Pros

*camera
*screen
*UI*slick performance
*build quality

Cons

*720p video
*no small apps (will be included soon)
*bravia engine

Alternatives

*Xperia M
*galaxy ace 3