Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo, smartphone with 3.7 inch screen & android OS Gingerbread (Review, Features & Specs)

If you look at first glance, the Xperia Neo is a smartphone similar to the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. However, in terms of functionality borrow more than Xperia Arc. Xperia Neo comes with a package of strong connectivity and the latest Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Xperia Neo selling for around $ 515 without a contract in the UK, a bit cheaper than sibling, Xperia Arc (around $ 650).

Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo has a screen measuring 3.7 inches FWVGA, known as the Reality Display with Sony’s Bravia engine Mobile, which is an additional software brings punchier, more saturated color to your screen when viewing pictures or videos. LCD capacitive touch screen has a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels and comes with a scratch-resistant surface. But despite that after a couple of days of use our unit surprisingly had the tiniest of scratches. What muds the waters of the generally beautiful colors on the Xperia neo is the below average sunlight legibility and viewing angles of the screen as it lacks in both brightness and proper anti-reflective coating. The tidiest of users will also find themselves wiping the front often – the screen picks up smudges and fingerprints easily.

In terms of design, Sony Ericsson maintains unique designs on products. Curved and rounded body, fits in hand nicely with a healthy weight of 4.4 ounces (126g). The Xperia neo doesn’t run circles around the idea of being the thinnest of thin, but it’s not overly bulky either with its 0.51 inches of girth (13mm). We had the silver version of the handset, but it also comes in midnight blue and red leaving you plenty of choice.

One of the main selling points of the Sony Ericsson Xperia neo is a 8.1 Megapixel camera with Flash LED. Sony claims that the sensor Exmor R significantly improve low-light performance. In our view, though, it ranked rather average as colors looked slightly washed out, while most of the images we took looked undersharpened and weren’t as rich in detail as we would expect from an 8-megapixel camera. The camera managed to handle well contrasting objects, but we could notice that sometimes it picked up side light and overexposed pictures. Surprisingly enough, low-lit scenes – where we expected to see the handset outshine competition – lacked sharpness, especially when we used the flash, and noise was also prevalent. When recording video, you should be satisfied with the quality of 720p HD capture at 30 frames per second. The neo Xperia also comes with a basic video editor allowing you to trim your footage. The front of the front there is a VGA camera along with proximity and light sensors. Finally, a 3.5mm headset jack sits on top, surrounded by a cap which protected microUSB and HDMI port.

The Xperia Neo has the same processor with sibling The Xperia Arc. Single Core processor 1GHz seem to put the performance of the neo Xperia far below the dual-core crowd. But the machine will handle everyday tasks, and multitasking applications with confidence. You will sometimes see a slight pause when switching between the screen or pressing the home button in a particular application, but it doesn’t grate much.

In terms of connectivity, the Xperia neo offers pretty much everything except for 4G – it comes with HSPA, supporting down speeds of up to 10.2Mbps, Wi-Fi b/g/n, hotspot functionality, DLNA , GPS, Bluetooth 2.1 and a microSD slot supporting cards of up to 32GB. It’s a global, quad-band GSM device, so you can use it without a problem when you travel abroad.

The stock Android browser supports Adobe Flash and runs fairly smoothly. Pinch-to-zoom and double taps all work flawlessly. The browser also supports text wrapping, so you get a better view of the text when you zoom in.

Sony Ericsson Xperia neo specs:

Display:

480 x 854 pixels, 3.7 inches, LED-backlit LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors

Performance:

1GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon, Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread), internal memory 320 MB storage, 512 MB RAM

Size:

116 x 57 x 13 mm. Weight: 126 g

Phone:

GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900. HSDPA 900 / 2100.   HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100

Camera:

8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, Video calling, touch focus, geo-tagging, face and smile detection

Yes, 720p@30fps, continuous autofocus, video light

Secondary Camera VGA

Audio:

Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.

Networking:

HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot and Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP.

USB:

microUSB v2.0

GPS:

A-GPS support, Google Maps.

Feature:

Digital Compass, SNS integration, HDMI port, MP4/H.264/WMV player,  MP3/WMA/WAV/eAAC+ player, TrackID music recognition, Organizer, Document viewer, Adobe Flash 10.1 support, Voice memo/dial/commands, Predictive text input

Battery:

Standard battery, Li-Po 1500 mAh

Stand-by Up to 430 h (2G) / Up to 400 h (3G)

Talk time Up to 6 h 55 min (2G) / Up to 7 h (3G)

Music play Up to 31 h

Expansion:

microSD, up to 32GB, 8 GB included

Sony Ericsson Xperia neo price : around $ 515.