Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo review

Ah, the mid range. The hardest fought area in the whole of smartphone-dom, every manufacturer wants to produce a relatively cheap phone with the kind of build quality and specs to deal with the big boys. So what about the Xperia Neo then? Does it have what it takes to stand alongside such peers are the Desire S? Read on, and be sure to check out our Arc and Play reviews.

Design/Build quality

Let’s just get this out of the way, shall we? The Xperia neo is ugly. From it’s angled back to the chrome effect sides it smacks of lazy design. Sony have opted to place more buttons along the side of the phone (as seen in the image above) and while I agree that power buttons should generally live on the side I disagree that placing the volume rocker in the middle of the right hand side is the correct way to go about it. When holding the phone with your left hand your middle and index fingers naturally rest on it, so while gripping it’s extremely easy to press the volume controls. The same goes for holding it with your right hand, the palm of your hand instinctive presses against it. The HDMI, USB and 3.5mm headphone jack are all located up top.
Not to mention, this is a chubby little kid. At 116 x 57 x 13 mm it’s as thick as my original Motorola Milestone (a phone with a slide out keyboard), while this does make sure it fits nicely in the small of your palm (unlike the Arc) it also makes it look much cheaper than its intended price point. Especially considering the low quality of the materials they’ve used to craft it, such as cheap plastics and creaky back doors.

Screen

The screen on the Neo is a 3.7″ LCD Panel, packing 480 x 854 pixels, giving it a slightly higher pixel density that the Desire S. Colours are well represented and viewing photos taken with the 8MP camera was a really pleasurably experience. As to be expected at this price range viewing angles weren’t superb by any stretch of the imagination but they’re perfectly serviceable in every day use. Touch accuracy is also good, responding to even light taps and swipes, limited to 4 points of multitouch contact. It utilises the Mobile Bravia technology, making all images on the phone look really nice.

Software

As on the Arc, the Neo is running Android 2.3.3 underneath SE’s Timescape UI. As I explained in the Arc review, I’m not exactly it’s biggest fan. During my testing I’ve encountered several random restarts and a couple of crashes in built in software applications, it’s also a bit of an ugly duckling compared to, oh, say, HTC’s offering with Sense. Striking a balance between minimalist and the in your face cartoony ugly fest that is Samsung’s Touchwiz, it’s far from being attractive, despite having some lovely widgets built it.
On the software front, Sony are quite keen on you having UEFA, WhatsApp, Let’s Golf, Postcard, OfficeSuite, Liveware Manager & Music Unlimited. These as usual cannot be removed, which is a shame considering you’re hardly ever going to use the things.

Power

1GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon. That’s what’s lurking inside the Neo’s bodacious body, it’s also the same as what’s in the Arc & Play. As I’ve detailed before, this particular chipset is more than adept, loading webpages quickly and letting you play any game on the market with no trouble at all. In Quadrant it gets around 1352 and 38 MFLOPS in Linpack. Sadly though, the case still stands that despite how powerful the chip, Sony still haven’t got their software at 100% yet. Doubtlessly this will come down the line in a software update, but as it stands all three of their current flagship phones suffer the same irritating lack of finish.

Camera

Well you knew the Neo had to have something up its sleeve, didn’t you? Yes, the camera on the Neo is superb. Actually among the finest phones in a camera I’ve ever used. It captures massive amounts of detail in both light and colour, giving pictures a rich depth. Sony’s camera app might be a tad fiddly but there’s plenty of replacements on the market. The same goes for the 720p recording function which while massively over egging the shake-correction (seriously, moving it around feels like jelly) produces really nice quality video that looks pretty great outputted onto your tv via the HDMI cable (not in box). Also of note is that the Neo has two microphones for better sound recording, this works beautifully when capturing voice in video.
The Neo also packs a front facing camera, which, as all current trends indicate is everybody’s favourite gimmick (well, behind 3D, anyway). Unsurprisingly, it takes terrible pictures.

It’s a phone too

Sound quality on the Neo in calls is absolutely fine, as is SE’s messaging app. What, you want more? IT SENDS AND RECIEVES CALLS.

Conclusion

As I said, the mid-range is a really tough place to compete. You’ve got to be cheaper than the big boys, but still keep up to them in both design and hardware. People don’t want to feel like they own an inferior product. Sadly, that’s what the Neo is. Despite having a nice screen, great camera and decent ergonomics I’d find it impossible to recommend this over the HTC Desire S which lives at a similar price point. The combination of ugly design, poor plastics and SE’s unfinished software fare poorly next to the beautiful unibody design and highly polished software of the Desire S. Do yourself a favor, don’t buy the Neo.