Sony Xperia C4 Review – The Explosive Selfie Phone

By explosive i mean powerful. So don’t think it’s actually going to explode or anything. Although it’s not far behind from Sony Xperia M4 Aqua in terms of ‘getting hot’. So who knows maybe it’ll… actually… explo… Just joking.

Hardware/Design

Well, design wise Sony Xperia C4 looks like the big brother of Sony Xperia E4G. Same asymmetrical front design and same matte finish back at the back. Its back is non-removable though. It might not look that premium but its pretty solidly built and due to its soft round edges it’s a very comfortable phone to hold despite of that big big 5.5 inch display. It also has a notification LED and dedicated camera button.

Display

Sony Xperia C4 comes with 5.5 inch IPS LCD display of full HD resolution. And just like any other IPS display its got very good viewing angles and colour reproduction. The display is very bright too, definitely brighter than Xperia M4 Aqua. It also comes with ‘Mobile Bravia Engine’ and ‘Super Vivid Image’ in display settings to enhance the image quality even more.

Camera

Just like Sony Xperia C3, Sony Xperia C4 also comes with 5MP front camera with LED flash. Like Xperia C3, this is not the only USP of Xperia C4 though. The back camera got a bump from 8MP to 13MP. And its better in image quality too. You can see the quality in photos yourself.

All i am going to tell you is, both of the cameras of this phone do their work quite nicely. The front camera picks up more light than your usual 5MP front camera to make your face shine bright even in low light conditions and then there’s that front flash if you need even more light ‘on yo face’.

The back camera is what really surprised me though, it takes very good photo with extremely good details and picks up a lot of light too. Even in bad lighting conditions it holds up very good and tries to keep the details of the image intact while keeping the noise level as low as possible. You can keep zooming in the photo taken from it and it will hardly get blurry or distorted. Except only if you zoom in all the way up-to the pixels.

You can shoot videos in full HD resolution from both front and back camera. You can also take photos while shooting videos. Keep in mind that it saves photos in MBs and videos in MP4 format so you might wanna use a memory card for photos and videos. If you use internal storage, it will fill up very quickly.

Multimedia

Sony Xperia C4’s music quality in earphones is very good and it comes with Sony’s own music settings for optimal music experience. It’s external speaker has a little problem though. It works perfectly, it sounds good too the problem is, it doesn’t have that tiny little plastic bump around it and because of that when you lay the phone flat on its back on any flat surface, you won’t be able to hear the ringtone loudly and you might end up missing the calls.

Happened to me a couple of times. My ringtone was at maximum level and yet i didn’t hear the phone ringing. The sound gets blocked or muzzled because of no space between the phone’s surface and any flat surface. That’s why it becomes very hard to hear. And that’s what that tiny little bump is for. To create that space to let the sound bounce back from the surface and not get absorbed or blocked. Anyway, 4K video playback is a no go, even in MX player, full HD video playback is fully supported though. Obviously.

OS/Storage/RAM

OS, Sony Xperia C4 comes packing is Android. Version is 5.0 Lollipop. It’s has got some new features like guest account option and a small call notification at the top instead of full page call notification when you are doing something on the phone. So that’s a very welcome feature.

OS/UI remains pretty smooth unless its RAM gets filled then it starts to act weird. For instance it becomes unresponsive or partially responsive until you restart the phone. On paper it comes with 2GB of RAM, in reality it comes with total of around 1600 MB RAM out of which you’ll get around only 600 MB free, which seems like not sufficient for Android Lolliop the phone behaves sometimes clearly demonstrate that.

It comes with 16 GB of internal storage out of which you’ll get around 10 GB free, it is expandable up-to 128GB via micro SD card. It does come with Move to SD option but its useless since you can’t actually install or move anything worthwhile to the micro SD card. Default write disk option is gone just like in Sony Xperia M4 Aqua. Sony Xperia C4 does support USB OTG.

Performance

I always prefer Mediatek 6752 over Snapdragon 615 when it comes to performance. But power comes with a price. Literally. Anyway, Mediatek 6752 chip-set consists of octa-core Cortex A53 processor clocked at 1.7GHz and Mali T760MP2 GPU. So performance wise you won’t have much problem playing most of the graphic intensive games on this phone. And since it doesn’t have any power saving cores it affects battery life too.

My problem is not really a problem with the phone or chip-set, my problem is with the Sony for pricing it absurdly high. If Sony has priced this phone reasonably then this phone would have been a very good value for money and its price to performance ratio would have been good too but now that Sony has priced it almost 30,000 Rupees, it’s nowhere even close to value for money. And price to performance ratio became only performance ratio ’cause price went out of the park.

Last year i called Sony Xperia C3, beauty without brain ’cause it came with a pathetically weak Snapdragon 400 for the price. But that’s not the case with Xperia C4 it comes with beast of a mid range chip-set. So they fixed something but ruined the other thing… the price.

Since its all that powerful, it also gets pretty hot while playing games just like Snapdragon 615 but unlike Snapdragon 615, Mediatek 6752 does not get that hot while using the phone normally. Like browsing web and using other apps it only gets noticeably hot while gaming.

Connectivity

It supports 4G and dual SIMs(Nano SIM). Its ear piece and mic is loud and clear and its WiFi is also very fast and does not loose connectivity that easily. It comes with your usual set of connectivity options like Bluetooth 4.1, WiFi direct, A-GPS, GLONASS, DLNA and lots more Sony’s own connectivity option.

Battery

Sony is promising around 13 hours of talk-time on this phone on 2G network. And that’s really about all you will get out of its 2600 mAh battery. Don’t expect ‘2 day’ battery out of this phone. You’d be lucky if it lasts you a day on continuous use. On gaming don’t expect more than 5-6 hours. To give you an example, i used the phone for like 2 hours with WiFi on and the battery dropped from 89% to around 40%.

If you really need this phone to last around 12 hours or a whole day i would suggest you to use it with stamina mode on. Sure, the performance will take a hit. But it will be worth it if the battery life is more important to you.

Verdict

Lets count this phone’s positive points, great camera performance, excellent gaming performance, full HD display. Lets count its somewhat negative points now, mediocre battery life, high MRP. My verdict is pretty straight forward, unless you can find a seller whom is selling this phone with manufacturer warranty for or under 25,000 Rupees(Approx $400). Don’t buy it. Wait till its price officially drops. It’s a very good phone but not 30,000 Rupees good.