Sony Xperia ion Review

Introduction:

Six months ago back at CES, Sony managed to surprise us with the introduction of its flagship Android smartphone in the Sony Xperia ion. During the time, we were undoubtedly captivated by its stellar specs sheet that consisted of a large 4.6” HD display, 4G LTE connectivity, dual-core processor, and a higher than normal 12-megapixel snapper. Looking back at it all, it surely sounded tasty in so many ways, but as time passed with no word regarding its inevitable arrival, our interest in it quickly faded into oblivion – even more when other prestigious smartphones began making their marks.

Fortunately for all of us, the Sony Xperia ion didn’t end up becoming vaporware, as the handset was officially tagged with a June 24th release date very recently. Call us jaded, its specs sheet no longer commands our attention, but maybe Sony needed to do something else to rekindle our interest in it once again? Well people, they surely managed to do just that by attaching a competitive $99.99 on-contract price point to it. After seeing the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III snatching the spotlight on AT&T’s lineup, the Sony Xperia ion needs to be on point in many aspects to stand a chance – and that’s in addition to its already stellar pricing!

The package contains:

• microUSB cable
• Rapid Wall Charger
• Quick Start Guide
• US Safety Guidelines

Design:

Frankly, after seeing the Sony Xperia S and U launching overseas, we’re not all that amazed by the design of the Xperia ion. Rightfully so, it employs the distinctive Xperia design characteristics that have been a staple with series – like its hard lines and curved rear. In comparison to some of its highly esteemed rivals, the Sony Xperia ion is noticeable heavier (5.08 oz) and thicker (0.42”), but then again, it can be attributed to its sturdier choice of materials. Specifically, it casing is mainly comprised out of a brushed metallic material, which strangely gets dirty very easily. Nonetheless, its build quality is very good and seems more equipped in dealing against some punishment better than other plastic devices. All in all, it’s a solid made phone, but lacks the intriguing design styles found with other devices like the HTC One X and Nokia Lumia 900.



You can compare the Sony Xperia ion with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Although it lacks the attention grabbing illuminated strip of the Xperia S and U, its usual set of Android capacitive buttons are still notoriously difficult to activate for some reason – and at times, they simply feel unresponsive. Worst yet, the dinky narrow slits below each button lack any profound backlighting, thus, making it nearly impossible to see what you’re pressing in the dark.

Above the display, there’s 1-megapixel front facing camera capable of shooting 720p videos, a tiny earpiece, and an LED notification light.

Comforting to say the least, the Xperia ion maintains a traditional form by opting to litter its right side with physical power, volume, and camera buttons. However, they’re barely raised and difficult to feel out – and it doesn’t help when their responses are lacking. Conversely, removing the plastic flap on its left side provides us access to its microUSB and microHDMI ports. Rounding things out, we also find a 3.5mm headset jack and microphone.

No doubt it’s above average when compared to other things, the Xperia ion is outfitted with a beefy 12-megapixel auto-focus camera with an LED flash and Exmor R sensor. Also, there are microdots in parallel form below the camera to make out its speaker grill. Even though there’s no access to its battery, the top plastic cover can be removed to gain access to its microSD and SIM slots.


Display:

Yet again, we have to admit that we were smitten by its 4.6” HD (720 x 1280) Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA Engine when our eyes first feasted on it back at CES. Indeed, we’re still attracted to it for the most part, thanks primarily to its sharp details, high pixel density of 323 ppi, neutral color production, and acceptable viewing angles. However, after checking out the displays on the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III, which are somewhat more profound, we’re not as convinced by this one anymore. It’s nice with very few complaints, but we’re not totally bonkers over it at this point. For some odd reason, there’s no automatic brightness option on the phone, which alludes to the fact that it doesn’t pack a light sensor.

Although its brightness output produces some pleasant visuals, we're still finding ourselves shielding the display when using it in direct sunlight - plus, it tends to wash out slightly when viewing at subtle angles.

Interface:

Typically, the US doesn’t see many Android powered smartphones from Sony’s camp, so that’s probably why some people are going to be unfamiliar with the custom Android experience running on the Xperia ion. Actually, AT&T claimed the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and PLAY 4G previously, so if you’ve owned or checked those out, you won’t find the experience on this one to be too alien. Just like the Xperia S and U, the ion is running the UXP NXT interface (from “next user experience”), and unfortunately people, it’s on top of Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread. Needless to say, some will think of it as a bummer, but as Sony tells us, they’ve brought along some ICS elements to the interface to tide us over.

Overall, it still packs all the lovable breadth of personalization that’s been a star attraction to the mobile platform. However, after experiencing HTC Sense 4.0 and Samsung’s TouchWiz Nature UX, we have to admit that Sony’s take is slim and not as comprehensive. Nevertheless, the minimalistic look of the UI and Sony’s specific set of widgets help to give it a distinctive look of its own, which we’re sure that some people will still perceive to be attractive.



Functionality:

As we’ve pointed out, the UI on the Xperia ion might seem somewhat foreign, but it’s in fact the same one found on the Xperia S and U that we’ve reviewed already. Therefore, if you want to learn more about its functionality, you can read it in our in-depth review of the Xperia S. This time around, however, there’s one new feature that we haven’t seen before – and it’s none other than Sony’s NFC based SmartTags function.

Similar to what we’ve explained with Samsung’s TecTiles, Sony’s SmartTags is within the same premise, as they’re programmable NFC chips that can perform specific actions when scanned with the handset.  First and foremost, these Sony SmartTags aren’t flimsy stickers like Samsung’s TecTiles, but rather, they’re durable circular shaped plastic tags that can be attached to your key chain. Using the SmartTags widget, we can program them to do a variety of actions, even multiple ones. These include things like running an app,  turning off/on Wi-Fi, adjusting the volume, and much more. Again, it doesn’t seem as comprehensive as Samsung’s offering, since it lacks social networking integration – like being able to check-in.

The on-screen keyboard that pops up when you are trying to write a message is well-spaced, but in portrait mode our fat fingers kept pressing the wrong key, so we usually turned it in landscape, but we guess you get better with time.



Processor and Memory:

Yes, it’s a dual-core CPU inside of the Xperia ion, but unlike its competition, it’s relying on the older dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 processor with 1GB of RAM. Call it madness or whatever, we’re not particularly too bummed by it, mainly because it still manages to perform decently – though, it’s quite obvious that its fluidity isn’t on the same pace as we’ve seen on the Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X. Furthermore, its benchmark results reflect its “older” hardware, but then again, we’re not that concerned since it performs sufficiently without becoming unusable at any point.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	NenaMark 2
Sony Xperia ion	2833	6044	36.4
Samsung Galaxy S III US	4520	6111	59.4
Sony Xperia S	3206	6595	37.5
HTC One X AT&T	4958	6863	57.7

Out of the box, the handset is graced with a modest 11.24GB of free storage, while another 1.59GB is reserved for apps and other system storage. Lucky for us all, it features expandable memory via its microSD card slot.

Internet and Connectivity:

Honestly, we’ll never get tired of knowing that these super spec’d smartphones are equipped with LTE radios. Knowing that, the Xperia ion delivers the same blazing data speeds that other LTE devices on AT&T’s lineup are capable of providing. Unfortunately, we’re irked to find that its web browsing performance isn’t spot-on flawless. Specifically, there’s some noticeable jerkiness with pinch zooming and kinetic scrolling, which is more profound when there’s heavy Adobe Flash content on screen. It’s never downright crawling, but still, it’s a blemish that’s profoundly evident.

Running off AT&T’s 4G LTE network in the greater New York area, the Xperia ion manages to pull in similar data speeds found with its rivals. At times, we’re able to see it getting as much as 10Mbit/s, which is the same result we obtained with the AT&T Samsung Galaxy S III. Additionally, the handset packs other connectivity features such as aGPS, Bluetooth, NFC, mobile hotspot functionality, and Wi-Fi.

Camera:

The greatest thing about the 12MP Exmor R sensor on the Xperia ion is how quickly it can be accessed. The camera interface is the same rich in camera functions UI as in the Xperia arc S, down to the 3D Sweep Panorama mode, whose results can only be watched on Sony's 3D HDTVs via the HDMI port. There is also a 3D Sweep Multi Angle panorama mode now, taken directly from the Sony Cybershot camera series, which has a narrower frame range, but can be previewed directly on the phone by tilting the screen left and right for a nice stereoscopic effect.


Seeing that it shares the same camera found with the Xperia S before it, the results do not differ this time around, as the quality of its shots are similar. For those wondering, the handset is game enough to replace your point and shoot. Naturally, it excels with taking outdoor shots in plenty of lighting, but we do notice just a bit of over-sharpening with its details – though, color reproduction appears to remain balanced. In low lighting, though, details are softer in tone, but our biggest complaint is its slow focus, which results in blurring if you don’t hold it steady. Thankfully, the LED counteracts most of the issues.


Likewise, its 1080p video recording is adequate for most situations, seeing that the results are in line to what we see with its still image quality. However, the focus is once again showing off its ugly side, as it takes an extreme amount of time to adjust. On top of that, its audio recording is somewhat wonky with its distorted sound.



Multimedia:

The music player has a more minimalistic interface now, with Metro-style “tiles” under the My Music tab that categorize your songs by artists, albums, playlists and so on. Even the back button in the player’s interface has an uncanny resemblance to the back button in Windows Phone. There is a “Sense Me” category that can pick tracks based on your mood, and the Music widget appears on the lock screen so you can control your playback faster from there. Sadly, its speaker is abysmally poor with its distorted tones and weak volume output.


Giving a lot of credit to its 4.6” HD Reality display with Mobile BRAVIA Engine, the Xperia ion is probably the best smartphone in Sony’s stable for watching videos. Supporting a variety of codecs, it’s able to flawlessly play our test video that’s encoded in DivX 1920 x 1080 resolution. With its BRAVIA engine, it’s able to adjust the display’s saturation to provide the most optimal viewing experience.

Unlike its rivals, we’re glad to find the Xperia ion sporting a more favorable (and traditional) microHDMI port to gain that always-useful mirrored experience on a high-def television.

Software:

As expected, AT&T makes sure to let everyone know about its presence on the Xperia ion – the crew consists of AT&T Code Scanner, AT&T FamilyMap, AT&T Navigator, AT&T Ready2Go, Live TV, myAT&T, and AT&T Messages. Aside from those carrier apps, we also find Amazon Kindle, OfficeSuite, and YPmobile rounding out the list of third party apps preloaded on the phone. Oh yeah, did we mention that it’s PlayStation certified as well? There’s no separate PlayStation store just yet, but we’re told that it’ll be arriving in the near future to give owners a hub to easily purchase games.

Performance:

We love that voices are clear, distinctive, and quite noise-free on both ends of the line, however, we’re sorely disappointed by the handset’s volume output. Specifically, the earpiece and speakerphone are simply too weak to hear our callers – thus, we’re forced to jam it against our face to listen intently.

During our time testing out the handset, the Sony Xperia ion didn’t drop any calls or fluctuate tremendously with its signal strength. From the looks of it, the ion manages to keep a steady -75 dBm signal strength in high coverage areas.

After using the handset for quite some time, we do notice that it feels a bit toasty in the rear. Compared to some other devices we’ve been checking out of late, its battery life doesn’t seem to be on the same level, as we’re left with less than a single day of normal usage. Obviously, LTE connectivity drains it like no other, but Sony is kind enough to throw in a rapid wall charger with the phone.

Conclusion:

Honestly people, the Sony Xperia ion would’ve been a downright success if it were launched months ago. At the time of its official unveiling, we were astounded by its commanding specs sheet, but seeing that it took an extremely long time coming to market, its appeal has lessened – even more now that we’ve experienced the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III for AT&T.

Still, we can’t help think about its immaculate $99.99 on-contract price point, which is undoubtedly one of its greatest attributes – much like the Nokia Lumia 900. Of course, it offers a ton of value for the money, but as a whole, its lower pricing is consolation for the fact that its rivals have beat it to the punch in terms of release. If pricing is a concern, by all means, we recommend checking out the Sony Xperia ion since it has enough gas in the tank to compete with most of its esteemed rivals. However, if you prefer something more awe-inspiring and comprehensive, we recommend checking out the HTC One X or Samsung Galaxy S III.

Software version of the AT&T review unit:
Android Version: 2.3.7
Build Number: 6.0.C.1.257
Kernel Version: 2.6.35.11-307007+

Sony Xperia ion Video Review: