Sony will do well to pull its latest offering near to the Rs 20,000 mark if they want to make prospective buyers seriously consider the Xperia T3.
Since its Ericsson days Sony has taken impressive strides in the smartphone world. The company has brought forward some really good handsets, complete with array of apps which remind the users of its strong presence in the fields of Display, sound and of course gaming.
The well known brands from Sony had to diversify a lot with the changing times and bring forward a range of products to ensure they cater to the varying demands of interested customers. Result has been handsets which carry few strong selling points of their flagships, yet made affordable by reigning in some other features.
The Sony Xperia T3 is the latest product from Sony, which intially seems to be banking on its screen, the size of which unmistakably tries to align itself with Sony Xperia Z2.
How much weight does the Xperia T3 holds to command a pricing of around Rs 25,000 bracket. Let's take a closer look.
Specs:
- OS: Android v4.4 (KitKat)
- Display: Triluminous 5.3 inch IPS LCD @ 720 x1280, ~277ppi
- Processor: Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A7
- RAM: 1 GB RAM
- Camera: Primary -- 8 MP, LED flash. Secondary -- 1.1 MP
- Memory: 8 GB, expandable up to 32GB
- Battery: 2500 mAh Li-Ion (Non-removable)
Built
The first thing which many will notice is the slimness of the phone. Sony has made the T3 its slimmest phone till date, and the omni-balance designing means that the weight is distributed nicely throughout. This makes the phone easier to handle.
Sony has set the Xperia T3 in plastic, and to impart a bit more class, the plastic is matte finish. This ought to bring sighs of relief and some smiles to a considerable section of people. This is not to say that the back panel will not need attention or that it will do away without a wipe. The matte finish isn't dust proof.
Adding further to a more impressive look, there is the inclusion of strip of chrome along the edges which accentuates its looks and makes it more easier on the eyes.
On the right side, the phone houses the Power button, the volume rocker, and the dedicated camera button as well. A flap hides the SIM and microSD card slots.
The left side of the phone carries the MicroUSB port.
Unfortunately, the Xperia T3 is not a waterproof phone. This was something which Sony should have considered.
Display
This is one of the strong points of the phone and Sony really would be counting on it to attract a good chunk of buyers based on the display.
The Triluminous technology accompanies the 5.3-inch worth of screen size.
At a resolution of 720x1280, which translates to ~277 pixel density, the display doesn't carry the sharpness of the high end phones, but the good thing is that the font edges don't really crack up and experience while using the phone for reading purposes isn't an unpleasant one.
The nature of the display again seems to be reminding one of the Xperia Z2. Characterised by nicely saturated and impressive blacks and good contrast, the display came up nice and vivid. To delight the enthusiasts, the white balance can be tweaked as well.
One little gripe is that despite being an IPS LCD, the viewing angles are not very sharpNot really too bothersome for the person using the phone though. But having said that, Sony did a good job in providing a display with an effective anti-reflective coating. This surely gave the screen an impressive look under direct sunlight and the contents on the screen were easily readable. One might need to toggle the brightness level according to personal preference though.
OS
The T3 comes with Android's Kitkat v4.4 right out of the box. The software department again looks similar to the Xperia Z2.
Sony has provided its usual bundle of apps with the T3 out of which the ones like Walkman, Playstation and Track ID are impressive. The last one being similar to Shazam, the very popular song identifying app, to which users have become accustomed and addicted to. This app is a welcome inclusion as a good chunk of users treat brand Sony as synonymous with something of a song playing device.
Sony has bundled other apps like TrackID TV, Office Suite, File Commander, Garmin Navigation, Facebook, Socialife News, Neoreader, Sketch, Update center, Video unlimited etc. The list is seriously long enough and should be able to find the users browsing through it for hours, looking for something that match their taste.
Unfortunately, Sony has made few of these as uninstallable, and that really will irk many given the relatively less memory onboard. Issue gets compounded when there is only 4GB worth of space left for the user to fill up with. A memory card purchase becomes imminent.
Ably supported by a 1.4Ghz quad core processor and a GB worth of RAM, the Xperia T3 did just fine Performance wise. It sailed through the usage exercise without any hitch or hiccups. Sony did the optimisation part thoroughly it seems.
With gaming, or other similar intensive usage, the phone did get a bit hot on the upper side. This might just be due to the super thin profile Sony has given to the T3.
Camera
The phone comes with 8MP camera as its primary snapper and has LED flash system for assistance whenever the need be. The camera does perform pretty nicely and captures impressive amount of details. The colours too came out decently as well. At times the photo might look a bit over saturated with colours, but still the photographs were not dull at all. This is stricly for day light photography.
The issue crops up during low light condition usage of the camera. The photographs here suffered from noise and the ill effects were fairly visible. The LED flash just about enables the results to be discernible enough, but in all seriousness, one should try to bring in about as much as ambient light as possible to get better results.
Sony has provided lots of modes for the users to play around with, like Manual mode, HDR mode, Superior Auto, Timeshift Burst, Sweep Panorama, Portrait Retouch, Social Live, AR Effect, and Creative Effect. However, it really depends on how much the users find these modes to be useful according to their personal likes and tastes.
For example, we still are to hear more support for the AR effect which really seems to be aimed at kids than serious users.
The front facing camera is nothing really to talk about, which stands at 1.1MP. It will be able to cater to the basic needs of the users with decent selfies and for video chat options.
Battery
Sony has supplied a non-removable 2500mAh battery with the Xperia T3. This isn't really much going by today's standards, but a lower screen resolution means that the phone isn't really churning out full HD graphics at all. Hence this should do the job easily despite the big screen size.
Near about 640 hours of talk time and 688 hours of standby is serious achievement indeed. The phone actually can shows off this aspect proudly.
Additionally, there are three modes provided to increase the battery backup if needed:
a. Stamina mode: The company claims that this mode near about doubles stamina of the battery. This is achieved by pulling back the hardware capabilities and the access to background data for various apps.
b. Low-battery mode: This is even more conservative as it reduces the phone to its bare minimum usage levels.
c. Location-based Wi-Fi: This automatically switches Wi-Fi on or off depending on the area having any saved Wi-Fi network.
Verdict
Sony has bundled along with the T3, accessories like Smart band worth 5,990 and a cover worth Rs 2500, which does make the deal a bit sweeter initially,
But this still doesn't hide the fact that Sony has pulled back some features massively. The Xperia T3 comes with only 1GB or RAM, and though OS and software optimisation is the key here, this certainly should have been bumped up to 2GB at the least.
The phone has only 8GB worth of memory onboard which is no enough. More so, when after all the pre-installed software, users get only 4GB worth of space to play around with. The memory card too is restricted to only 32GB worth of space.
For people who like to move around with lots of media files or important back ups, this might become a big let down in the longer run. The no waterproofing surely will make people cringe right at the spec sheet itself.
The Sony Xperia T3 should have swayed to options like Nexus 5 and Moto G that represent the two extremes. Having said that, Sony will do well to pull their latest offering near to the 20,000 mark if they want to make prospective buyers seriously consider it.
