Sony Xperia C Review

Sony Xperia C is not one of those 5 inch screen phone which you can buy for around 12,000 Rupees. It’s different, what’s different you ask? Well, first of all its a Sony phone and anything which is Sony does not come cheap, Xperia M is an exception. You are paying 20,000 Rupees for Sony’s name here. The processor inside this phone, you can find it in any Quad-core sub 10,000 rupees phone, and not only that for as much as 8,000 Rupees less you can get HD 720p display, So then why is Sony asking for 20,000 Rupees for this phone? That’s what i am going to tell you about in this review, I am going to break down different aspects of a phone like hardware, software, camera and much more in small chunks of words so that you can digest it easily without scratching your head.

Hardware & Design

Hardware wise the phone is really solid built, its very slim just 8.9mm thick, Sony is continuing its unique design which gives a illusion that the phone is uni-body but its not. Even though its not uni-body, the battery is still not removable. To open the phone read the booklet, that’s what i did. For buttons and ports its got a micro usb port, a power/lock key, volume up/down button, camera button, 3.5 mm headphhone jack on top, 8 MP camera with LED flash at the back, VGA camera in the front and just around it proximity sensor.

Design wise it looks a lot like Xperia Z from the front especially because of the speaker and mic placement, from the back it looks like a big brother of Xperia M. Quite frankly i don’t like how its back look, it looks odd, its not evenly curved like Xperia M, that makes it look more awkward. Sony should have made it flat back or something like Xperia SP, Anyways that’s my personal opinion. Its very wide thanks to it very big bezel which makes it difficult to hold or use with one hand. Its got a nice little notification LED right above the mic in the front, the LED is very subtle in density, which is very good to save battery. For navigation its got on screen buttons and i hate them with a passion. Again, Personal Opinion.

Display

Display of this phone is a very beautiful 5 inch qHD resolution that’s 540×960 at 220 pixels per inch. I have no proof to prove this but i think this display is indeed triluminous display, you know that Sony’s new fancy LCD backlight technology, Sony’s answer to IPS displays. I must say Sony really did a great job because compared to previous standard TFT LCD screen Sony used to put inside its phones like Sony Xperia SP, the screen of Xperia SP looked washed out when you look at it from a angle but Xperia C does not have this problem. It looks beautiful no matter what angle you look at. Xperia SP has Mobile Bravia Engine to make out for its feeble display but you know what Xperia C doesn’t even need that, its beautiful as it is.

Camera

Xperia C got a primary 8 megapixel Camera at the back with LED flash and its capable of capturing 1080p videos, Video Quality is not that good in dark condition just like its still image performance, and noise is the culprit, it captures too much noise in dark conditions. In day light though just like the Sun, Xperia C’s Camera shines like bright light. It captures most of the detail with very minimal noise. Its also got lots of built in Camera functions like HDR, touch to focus, single auto-focus, smile detection, self portrait voice guide(this will help you take your own portrait picture), portrait picture enhancement, and much more standard functions for all the Camera geeks. For video sample check out the review video below. Front camera is so bad that i don’t even want to write about it, its just there for its name sake.

Still samples:

Performance

Xperia C runs on Mediatek MTK 6589 Processor which is by the way a combination of Quadcore Cortex A7 and PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU and it also has 1GB RAM, so the performance of this phone is quite predictable. Android 4.2.2 Jellybean runs without any problems on it, the interface is quite fluent without any lags, app opens without any stuttering. Well the real performance of the phone comes out when you play games on it, check out our benchmark & gaming post on Xperia C for that. You can install big games on it pretty easily because this phone supports Move to SD Card by default and you are going to need it anyways cause’ it has only 1.20 GB total internal storage out of which only 0.98 GB is available for the user.

Connectivity

Sony Xperia C is a well connected device, its got everything like WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth 4.0 and did i say that its a dual-sim device, yes it is a dual-sim phone with one WCDMA/GSM and one GSM Sim support which is very rare in Android phones. Call quality is very clear, mic and speaker volume is good too. Sometimes it loses its WiFi signal without any reason even though when i was in full WiFi coverage it kept fluctuating, so that’s little something i discovered. Web browser is default Google Chrome and browsing is fluent without any lags all thanks to 1GB RAM, pinch to zoom, in browser video playback everything works without a hitch. Messages works as they should, if you don’t want to use SMS, you can use WeChat or Line etc as they all come pre installed on the phone. Dual Sim functions includes forward the calls to second sim and vice-versa.

Multimedia

There’s iPhone which offers little to nothing in music settings for customization except for EQ and then there’s Sony, they give so many features to choose from the music settings of the Walkman that sometimes i get confused what to use. There’s clearphase, clearaudio, and virtual surround sound options although all of these only works in headphones as in you can only tell the difference through headphones, for speaker its got xLOUD but still the speaker feels feeble, comparing to the size of the phone the speaker sounds so small. Video player is called movies it supports 1080p by default with support to most of the formats. Videos look beautiful though because of its screen. It also comes with apps like picsart and sketch with which you can edit photos or simply draw something yourself. I don’t know if it supports stylus because i didn’t have any stylus to test it with. It sure does not support nails and neither pencils like Xperia Z Ultra. Albums is where all your photos are saved.

Battery Life

The most stupid thing that you can measure in this world is battery life, that’s a fact. Well for me at least. Let me tell you why, battery life of a phone depends solely on the use or person, so, if i give you a number like “its battery life is 10 hours” and then you started playing games on it with brightness set to highest level and WiFi on then it is a no-brainer that your battery will deplete faster. Same goes for web browsing, video playback You don’t need any special measurement to measure that, its common sense. Battery capacity is 2390mAh, according to Sony on 2G it will give you up-to 14 hours of talk time and around 12 hours on 3G. Mind you, we are only talking about talk-time here as in using the phone as a phone to talk and nothing else.

Anyways, just for an idea you will get around 6-8 hours on heavy use like continuous gaming and web browsing, around 10 hours on casual use like little gaming and occasional web browsing, and your usual calls, messaging what not, again, it all depends on the use of the person. Although you will get some options from Sony like Stamina mode which will increase your battery marginally by turning off the WiFi, 3G, mobile data, lowering the brightness of the phone automatically, whenever you are not using the phone or when the phone is in ideal state like when you are sleeping. By the way Dual Sim means dual standby so that will effect your battery life negatively, so keep that in mind.

Conclusion

I said this in the video, i will say it again, for around 20,000 Rupees Sony is giving you free Headphones and ADP that’s Accidental Damage Protection, its a type of warranty and its very useful if you break a lot of phones, doesn’t matter if intentionally or not. You can get the phone around 18,000 Rupees online but then you will not get the ADP warranty which i think is more important than free headphones, although, you will still get the standard 1 year warranty. The phone is pretty good performance and hardware wise, especially its screen which believe me is really awesome but still 20,000 Rupees is not the correct price for it.

I wouldn’t recommend it right now only because of its price but if you don’t care about the price and desperate to buy a Sony phone with 5 inch screen, mind you this is the only 5 inch screen phone available from Sony around 20,000 Rupees, Rest are all above 30,000 Rupees except for Xperia ZL so you’ve got no choice anyways. If you want a 5 inch screen phone only from an international brand or company then the only other choice you’ve got is Samsung Galaxy Grand rest are all from Indian or Chinese companies. If you don’t want 5 inch screen phone then buy Xperia SP straight as that, it is also available around the same 20,000 Rupees and it completely destroys not only Xperia C but but every other phone around that price, performance wise. It is the best, not just one of the best, the best phone around 20,000 Rupees right now. The only place Xperia C beats Xperia SP is the screen quality.

If you want 5 inch screen and Xperia C only then I would say maybe wait around Diwali or more, let the price come down a bit around 18,000 Rupees or lower, then it would become a better deal. Especially with ADP warranty.