Sony Xperia M2 Review

Sony Xperia M2, the successor of Xperia M is not going to be as successful as Xperia M. Reason is simple. Its price. Sony doubled the price but forgot to double the performance of Xperia M2. For example it has the same GPU as Xperia M. Although they did double the internal storage from 4GB to 8GB and also the processor. Xperia M has dual core Cortex A7 CPU while Xperia M2 has Quadcore Cortex A7 CPU clocked at 1.2 GHz. Not high enough looking at the price point. Sony just became the second best smartphone selling company in India and i think it wants to lose that position pretty quickly.

Hardware & Design

This is the only department in which this phones shines. Despite of being totally made of plastic this phone is very sturdily built. It looks exactly like Xperia Z. it has scratch resistant glass in front. And also some type of glass on the back too. Only 8.6mm thick. Although the bezels could have been a little smaller. The battery is fixed inside due to unibody design. This phone is not water or dust proof/resistant. It has a dedicated camera button which is always good to have.

Display

It has got 4.8 inches TFT LCD screen with qHD resolution. Looking at the processor this phone has, i wouldn’t complain about the resolution as low resolution actually helps increasing the performance. Again looking at the price that is not a good thing. The viewing angles of Xperia M2 are not that great. Thanks to TFT LCD. It also has a yellow tint. All in all screen is not worth 20,000 Rupees. Samsung Galaxy Grand 2, Canvas Knight has better screens than this phone. It does not have mobile bravia engine.

Camera

This phone comes with 8MP camera with LED flash and also VGA front facing camera. It has Exmor RS sensor for mobile. It comes with a lot of camera options. Like ‘AR effects’ and ‘timeshift burst’ and many more you can see in the review video below below. An example of photo taken with AR effects you can see below.

Now talking about the image quality. During daytime this phone’s camera performs better but around evening time or in low light situation the picture becomes a little noisy. It doesn’t pick the same details as it does during day time. It can shoot 1080p videos. It shoots videos in MP4 format. You can also take photos while shooting a video. You can see the quality in the video and photos below.

Performance & OS

This phone runs on Snapdragon 400 chipset which has Quadcore Cortex A7 processor and also Adreno 305. Which is a very weak chipset in terms of raw performance. It does not worth 20,000 Rupees simple as that. Sony did a good job in optimizing the OS to run smooth on this chipset. It doesn’t lag or slow down. It runs smooth as butter. The OS is almost is almost stock Android Jelly Bean 4.3 with Sony’s minimal skin on top of it. This phone is guaranteed to get a KitKat Android 4.4 update in the future, by Sony.

When it comes to where the performance really matters, the gaming performance this phone is a hit or miss, it depends on the game’s developer. If the game is optimized for this GPU it will run well but if its not then it won’t. It doesn’t have raw power to run every game smoothly without optimization. It can not run GTA San Andreas properly, it feels like you are playing a slide show of the game. High price doesn’t always means high performance.

Memory & Connectivity

Memory wise this phone has 1GB of RAM and 8GB ROM out of which around 500MB RAM is always free for the user and 5GB internal memory for the user to store games, apps, music, photos. It supports Micro SD card memory up-to 32GB. It doesn’t have ‘preferred install location’ and ‘move to sd’ features. Both of these made Xperia C made so successful. Looks like Sony want to lose that No.2 mark in India, desperately.

Connectivity wise it is well stuffed, it has got WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, Dual sims, DLNA, Screen mirroring, Xperia link. If you have a Smart TV or a TV which has built in WiFi you can directly connect this phone to it through WiFi. You can also connect Dualshock 3 controller with it through cable or Bluetooth. I tried it with Asphalt 8 and it works flawlessly. This phone supports USB OTG.

Battery

Battery life of this phone is pretty good even without turning on that ‘Stamina’ mode that comes with Xperia phones. It has 2300 mAh battery. More than big enough for such an inferior chipset, it doesn’t even have HD display, more battery saved right there. It will easily last you all day with casual usage. If you constantly play games on it, Xperia M2 will last aroud 6-7 hours. It gets a little hot around the middle section of the back of the phone while on heavy load like while playing games and/or constantly using WiFi/3G to surf the net.

Opinion

If you take my opinion. I would say don’t buy this phone as it has very bad price to performance ratio. This phone does not worth more than 16,000-17,000 Rupees. If you really want to buy this phone then wait for the price to come down. Cosmetically this phone looks very expensive though, my father mistook it for Xperia Z. If you want to buy it just to show off and if you have the money then who am i to stop you? Go ahead and buy it. But i still don’t recommend this phone for 20,000 Rupees. Beauty is not everything. Its What’s inside that really matters.