Get it? Y?
Bad pun aside, I really do question the name change, because when you look at the device, it is unabashedly a continuation of the Xperia Z line-up. To the untrained eye, it looks pretty much like the Xperia Z5.
Much like with each and every new Xperia smartphone, the changes to the aesthetics are minute. For those looking for a bigger design change with the name change, you’re out of luck. It is basically telling the same Omni-Balance story that we have come to expect from Sony.
The front of the screen now has a 2.5D curve around the edges. On the rear, instead of glass, we now have a metal finish instead. Like the front, the edges are ever so slightly curved. The changes might seem insignificant visually, but it does round the phone up so it feels more ergonomic in the hand.
Another nice little touch is that the rear now has less tramp stamps compared to before, with a simple Xperia branding in the middle.
It's not all changes for the better though. I am not a huge fan of the change to a coloured front bezel. I prefer just having it black like past Xperia device. This is just a personal preference though, the biggest change for me is that the Xperia X no longer has an IP (Ingress Protection) rating. What used to be a hallmark feature of Xperia Z series devices is now only reserved for the more expensive variant, the Xperia X Performance, a variant that is not sold in Singapore yet.
According to an interview by AndroidAuthority, Sony did claim that while it isn’t IP rated, they had internal testing done on the Xperia X. The Xperia X should be able to withstand splashes and short submersions. Nonetheless, it is still not IP rated, and I wouldn’t count on the words of a single source.
Having been in situations where I got my entire phone wet, water resistance to me should be a standard feature going forward. For a device that we rely on so much, it should at least be able to get a little wet without conking out. It’s sad to see Sony taking a step back on the Xperia X since it is still a pretty expensive phone.
The sides are pretty much identical to the Xperia Z5, with a side-mounted fingerprint sensor on the right hand side. The positioning is actually pretty spot on no matter you're using it on your right hand or left. This is definitely my favourite position for a fingerprint sensor to be placed at. This position works even when the phone is placed on a flat surface, something you can’t say for rear-mounted sensors.
The speed in which it unlocks the phone is pretty impressive too, and it has been pretty reliable so far in my time with it. My only minor gripe is that the power button feels pretty mushy, and has a very unsatisfying click to it.
When you finally unlock the phone, you're greeted by a pretty good looking 5.0” FHD Triluminos LCD display. While some may lament the lack of a QHD display, I don't find myself missing the more densely-packed panels all that much. Let's just say I haven't bought into the virtual reality hype just yet. For my needs, FHD is still more than adequate. In fact, I welcome it for the fact that it is less pixels for the phone to push around, which probably helps performance and battery life.
I am not an expert when it comes to colour calibration, but even with X-Reality mode turned off, the colours seems a bit off to me. Viewing angles were still decent though along with decent outdoor visibility.
Continuing on the tradition of the Xperia Z line-up, the phone houses stereo front-firing speakers. As per tradition, the speakers are decent but not mind blowing. Clarity is good, but in terms of volume, even the single firing speaker on the S7 Edge seems slightly louder than the Xperia X. In the case of speakers, two is definitely still better than one. When playing games or watching videos, having that stereo effect is still more enjoyable compared to just volume.
(Xperia X's microSD card slot doubles as a 2nd SIM card slot as well)
Which brings me to the more controversial aspect of the Xperia X, performance. First, a bit of house-keeping. The Xperia X is powered by a mid-range Snapdragon 650 chipset rather than the usual flagship processor this year, the Snapdragon 820. It isn’t even using the beefier Snapdragon 652. The chipset is paired with 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM with 64GB of eMMC 5.0 storage. None of the above is particularly impressive, especially considering the price of the Xperia X. The only redeeming factor is that Sony is selling the 64GB model in Singapore rather than the 32GB one.
So is it a flop? Not exactly.
In day to day usage of the device, I actually found it to be very snappy. If I didn’t know the specifications of the phone beforehand, I probably wouldn’t have guessed that it was using a middling chipset. Perhaps it’s the lower resolution FHD display, or perhaps Sony had some serious optimisation done. Whatever the case, I am generally pretty happy with the performance of the Xperia X.
Playing Kingdom Hearts: Unchained X, the phone kept a smooth frame rate of the animation even throughout more graphically intensive scenes with lots of animation. As a gauge, both the LG G5 and HTC 10 with the Snapdragon 820 chipset felt like they had more dropped frames in the same situation. Though to be fair those are phones with a lot more pixels to push.
The only complain I have when it comes to performance is actually just in one area, which is the camera app. I will touch more on this in the camera portion later. For now let’s talk about software.
Sony’s UI still looks and works pretty similar to stock Android, just with their own “enhancements” and “tweaks”. This is again in line with its past Xperia devices. This time round, I did notice less bloatware which is always nice to see, but would be better if there were none at all. The bulk of them are actually mostly Sony’s own apps. Movie Creator, Sketch, Track ID, Xperia Lounge, etc. I wished they would just relocate them to the Play Store and made them optional instead. However, with the ability to disable most of them anyway, it’s more of a minor annoyance than anything else. To be fair they are not the only company who does this.
What annoys me is that some of the default applications like Music and Album are still packed with junk. The music app just needs to play music on my device, and the album app only needs to let me organise and view my photos. It's really not that hard. If Sony has no idea what to do with their own apps, they can always take a page out of HTC’s playbook and just stick to Google's alternative instead.
There are some other quirks as well that I am not a huge fan of though, especially in the app drawer. It scrolls horizontally, and there is this “Suggested” page all the way to the left that I could not find the settings to turn off. If you pay close attention too, you’ll notice the lack of the status bar in the app drawer. Why they decided to do this is beyond me. That little bit of space saved makes absolutely zero impact of the amount of things you can fit on screen. It’s just spreading the icons further apart by a little bit. For that, I need to swipe down to bring the status bar back again every time I want to see the time, see my notifications, or toggle any settings on/off. It’s a change that makes little to no sense to me. Then if you want to add an app to the home screen, you would have to drag the icon to the top first before you can do so. I would have preferred if they stuck to how stock Android does it.
Xperia UI also now has the option to double tap the home screen to turn off the screen, a feature I wished every phone came with. But sadly on the Xperia X it isn’t quite properly implemented just yet. If I use double tap to sleep, I can’t use my fingerprint to unlock the phone. I need to fall back on my backup pin again. Pretty disappointing to see a built-in feature so half-heartedly implemented. Testing a friend’s Xperia Z5 Premium, this feature works properly though, so I’m sure this will be fixed soon enough.
I ended up just going for Google Now Launcher instead to make things simpler.
A battery capacity of just 2,620mAh probably seem a bit tiny at first, but keep in mind that phones like the Samsung Galaxy S7 only has a 3,000mAh battery, and has to power a QHD screen with a more powerful processor to boot.
While Sony “up to 2 days” battery life claims are definitely doable with lighter usage, the use of stamina mode, and some other tweaks, real day to day heavier usage got me through just about a work day from morning till night, and not much more than that. It is decent for a phone this class, but just don’t swallow Sony’s marketing whole.
Sony is also claiming superior battery longevity in the long run with Qnovo’s charging technology. It boasts 2 times the battery lifespan compared to Xperia phones of old. Whether the claim holds true, only time will tell.
The phone does support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 standard, but you won’t find one inside the retail packaging. Disappointing, but I am not going to beat the decomposing horse here (Xperia Z5 didn’t have a fast charger too). Just keep in mind that there have been phones that cost half the price but still comes with a fast charger. Perhaps this is a way to ensure the longevity of the battery inside the Xperia X, or perhaps this is just a cost-saving measure. At this point, I don’t really care anymore.
Sony is widely acclaimed in the market for making the best camera sensors for mobile devices. In fact most flagship devices in the market today use a Sony sensor. Which is a surprise why their smartphone cameras have never been particularly great to use.
Sadly, the Xperia X continues the tradition of sub-par camera experiences.
The camera on the rear uses a similar setup as the Xperia Z5, a 23MP sensor with a 24mm wide angle lens with an aperture of f/2.0. It has a relatively large sensor size at 1/2.3”, but because of the larger megapixel count, it results in a pixel size of around 1.12µm only. The camera defaults to 8MP on Superior Auto Mode, so that’s what I am shooting in most of the time. Superior Auto Mode is supposed to be able down-sample the image taken by the 23MP sensor into a better 8MP image, and able to intelligently adjust the shot accordingly base on the situation.
Being one of the very few smartphones in the market with a dedicated 2-stage camera shutter button, you can quickly launch the camera by long-pressing the button even when the screen is off. The launch while quick, isn’t quick and convenient as Samsung’s alternative due to the placement of the button. Once the camera is up and running, it’s pretty quick to focus too. However having been spoiled by the Galaxy S7’s super quick focusing, the Xperia X’s focusing speed doesn’t quite feel as impressive anymore.
Image quality wise, I found the camera on the Xperia X to be pretty decent actually. The only downside is probably Superior Auto Mode, which is pretty inconsistent. Sometimes shots turn out great looking, other times not so much. It does have the tendency to boost the greens slightly, which I'm not a huge fan of. But details, sharpness, and contrasts are still pretty good.
In Manual mode at 23MP though, things look a lot better. Despite having more noise, images has better colour reproduction, and are brighter in general. In the end I would have preferred if a single Auto mode took care of everything in all types of situations like most smartphones do these days. For a smartphone, Auto mode is probably the most important camera mode, and Sony’s Auto mode definitely needs a lot more work.
(Manual Mode)
(Superior Auto Mode)
Talking about Manual mode, it could really use a lot more settings than what Sony is offering, which is just white balance and exposure compensation. The modes like AR effect, Sound Photo, Creative Effect, etc, should really be optional extras rather than built-in features.
By the way the front camera is 13MP and something that I don’t really use.
The biggest issue with this camera is the speed though. It's slow. When I tried to capture an image, it takes a while before I can tap on the preview button. When I do, it takes a while more to open the image. When the image opens it takes a while more before I can start zooming into it. It's a pretty frustrating experience.
Overall the camera experience on the Xperia X is marred by mostly the camera UI and sluggishness. The camera experience comes across as being underwhelming despite the relatively decent image quality. Its Auto mode is still sorely trailing behind the offerings of its competitor, and in some areas actually regresses compared to the Xperia Z5. Disappointing when you consider that this has been a similar story as past Xperia devices too.
Full resolution images here.
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The Xperia X is a phone that has no place in Sony’s lineup, especially not at Sony’s asking price of S$848. It is a decent phone that doesn’t really break any new grounds or push the boundaries of what’s possible with a smartphone. At this point in time, retailers are selling the Xperia X at just slightly over S$700. This is a price that almost matches the Samsung Galaxy S7, and the S7 is a phone that I think outclasses the Xperia X in almost every aspect. It even has the IP68 rating that Sony decided to do without for the Xperia X.
At this point, I personally think that the Xperia Z5 is still a better buy if you really want a Sony smartphone. You get a slightly bigger battery, a slightly bigger screen at 5.2”, IP68 rating, the ability to record UHD video, and a faster processor. The only two things the Xperia X wins out significantly are the front facing camera, and the higher internal memory capacity. More importantly, the Xperia Z5 is actually cheaper than the Xperia X at the point of this post.
For a company struggling to gain a foothold in the mobile industry, it feels to me like Sony isn’t even trying at all to sell more smartphones at all. That is what I want to believe at least. Because if this is the best that Sony can do, then its mobile division is really doomed.
The Xperia X could be a great phone if priced a lot more reasonably. At its current price though, there are way better alternatives in the market.
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