Full Review:Sony Ericsson Xperia Active

Overall, the design and usability

The Sony Ericsson Xperia active is one of those strange phone that can survive under water helps you lose weight and maintain their social networks at once. But it is actually a correct phone too?

Sony Ericsson has released a vessel loaded with different Android smartphones this year. We had two versions of its huge 4.2-inch Xperia Arc flagship mid-range options such as the excellent Ray and Xperia Neo, smaller Xperia Mini and Mini Pro for those on a tight pocket space budget .

Active Xperia sits somewhere at the bottom of the batch. For 3-inch capacitive touch-screen Bravia Engine rotates 320 x 480, as well as a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and can record video in 720p resolution.

That's it in a box of dust and water resistant - and a loaded some health applications. And there is an elastic bracelet in the box to take to the gym, or just keep it safe.

Prices for Sony Ericsson Xperia assets at the time of the review, start at around £ 240 to buy an open model with monthly contracts available around 20 pounds depending on the number of included minutes and texts you need.

This means that the assets of a relatively small less expensive option in this era of mobile dual-core monsters, you get more water and dust as a bonus.

The phone definitely interesting to watch, its lightweight metal frame and a frosted orange band that seems so odd mix of mobile phones, kitchen utensils and flotation device of an emergency. Volume buttons, camera and able to sit on the orange plastic bits, so it's quite light and thin - but it's your sacrifice for the seal.

The display is a 3-inch capacitive model is very sensitive and do not miss a key addition to Sony Ericsson says it has "tracking wet fingers," so that you can wear what she and your hands are wet. And yes, you can.

As with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc and the rest of its line of 2011, also on the screen using the engine of the company and the Bravia display Reality ...

... Even with a low resolution in the end only 320 x 480, it makes no difference and it is not as sharp or vibrant as the amazing displays found on the S Xperia Xperia Arc and Ray.

There are no physical buttons on the front of the Active, only three capacitive touch buttons on the bottom - at the rear, Home and Menu - active response to touch the buttons seem perfect and without delay.

The camera shutter button on the bottom right, but it is quite disgusting. Will feature two stages press the fire, then press harder to shoot, but it is quite small and plastic, so it's all a bit 'vague.

At least there's an LED flash on the back, the more the sensor is deeply rooted in the case giving it a little protection from scratches and dirt in general.

The robust active Xperia Sony Ericsson feels good in hand, with its curved back rubber. The use of a hand is simple with the touch buttons at the top enough to facilitate the access and the phone feels well balanced. This is not to worry about dropping them.

The data for external users mentioned that the USB connector and a headphone jack active, which are placed at the bottom of the phone, behind the door rubber seal fat close and keep the water out.

Take the reverse and you get more reassuring than the Sony Ericsson Xperia assets can survive a few seconds in the toilet. There is a secondary rear cover inside the outer casing, which is perfectly in the top of the internal bits and actually hold tight.

It is a little weird combination. The orange plastic gives a little look like a toy town, but the icons of the silver buttons and curved, rubberized back just to bring it back to the territory cool gadget.

Interface

Sony Ericsson Xperia Active arrives on Android 2.3.4, the application of the standard Sony Ericsson interface on top.

Once again, the Active is located somewhere in the middle of the 2011 range of mobile phone companies, but with "corners" icon in the system, we have seen the work of so great an impact on the Mini and Mini Pro Xperia, and in collaboration Android 2.3.4 with the software, the same options and nuances found in much larger arc Xperia, S.

The basic system is Android as usual - Sites rolls five years, taking a mixture of about shortcuts, icons and widgets, live ...

... And if that's not enough room for all your app shortcuts, Sony Ericsson has stuck an icon of the castle collapsed in the corner of the screen, which can each accommodate four app-launch icons.

Modification of these connections is simple. Press and hold the icon, it is possible that bin or take it out and drop it onto the home screen. Or, if you scroll through the phone application notices that one of them you can remove it from the corner position.

There is another small new app-drag feature happened to Sony Ericsson software update 2.3.4 - Share Facebook. When you drag an icon, a small blue drop-down tab at the top of the screen so you can drag the icon over it and generate an updated Facebook status with a link to the list of Android Market app.

Sony Ericsson has also included the recording medium for some time. Drag an application on the phone the other led to assume that you want to create a folder, then there is a folder, with the possibility of giving a name.

It 'also a lot of widgets for Xperia active, that the way in Android to add interactive content for web sites. Favorites & Above The Call Log is one of the best choices for your favorite contacts by dragging their icons and stick to the grid, which has a separate board seems to require an intervention.

It is useful to make a splash screen for it, if you're a heavy user of smartphone today compose existing features.

If you are not impressed by the approach of Sony Ericsson little bland visually, there are some themes for spice. They are a little more wallpapers that change the home screen and add a subtle effect on the menu pages, but it is useful function.

And of course, supports Android phone is powered Live Wallpapers, but only one, Google Maps, background, comes pre-loaded. He worked without cracking the phone or cause performance degradation.

Contact us and calling

Contacts section of the asset Sony Ericsson Xperia is the same as those found in the rest of the 2011 Sony Ericsson Android smartphone range that combines your standard massive list of all you ever met some cool new features Facebook social.

And contact your SIM card and Gmail, the phone will pull all your friends from Facebook and Twitter, please log into these accounts, magically fill your phone with all you've shared a joke Internet.

These can be filtered, fortunately, it is possible to remove all imports of Facebook and Twitter to touch a single button or you may phone only display the details of those accounts that have actual numbers associated with them.

Contact page for each person varies, depending on how they came into being on your phone. Facebook pages and Twitter is a simple data import, read-only, so there's no shooting, Stephen Fry and Adam Buxton Twitter and saw their home phone number pop up on your phone.

Those people with phone numbers that you have legally obtained a more comprehensive list of staff, where you can change the data, to increase instant messaging accounts, set a specific ring tone when they call, to add custom fields for the real world addresses, email addresses and more.

You can also send samples directly to the mailbox through the exchange of their contact page. I'm sorry, Mom.

One of the settings from Sony Ericsson Android is more hidden in this section, all contacts have Facebook accounts associated with them get their own mini tab in Facebook contact area. Active Downloads Xperia images of his friend, you have a Facebook contact list in miniature in the area - with data from their "interests" of the social network.

Call quality is good. Headset is called loud and clear across the clear, natural sounding.

There is a second microphone on the back of the Sony Ericsson Xperia active, giving the possibility of noise removal phone to make calls even clearer. It can be enabled or disabled in the configuration of the calls, depending on whether you like the way it changes the audio output. Not a big change.

Face is quite simple, providing quick access to the card at the bottom of the availability of the call log, the whole list or a shorter list of favorites compiled of people who played the main contacts within the region.

Posts

Text messaging is a simple matter threaded SMS messages Sony Ericsson giving a harmless skin around simple little speech bubbles.

If you connect the image text message, the phone will automatically switch to something less than 300 K, so that it is accepted by all networks. It 'the same video, even by pulling the editor you can cut and package the existing clip, or by setting the camera to the lowest level of a low setting to save clip, right, and then must select the "Record Video "menu, select the attachment text.

Text input is via the attenuation default QWERTY keyboard, which, in a 3-inch screen, it requires a little patience and precision to be used reliably. In addition, the low-resolution screen-ish keyboard makes it look a little creepy generation and last.

It is possible to choose a phone keypad, but it makes better use of screen size, which also includes predictive text input. Or, if you are happy with both the Sony Ericsson Xperia asset can be configured to use the QWERTY keyboard when the phone is used in landscape mode, and keyboard in portrait mode. Or vice versa, but it would be foolish.

One of the major additions made for new Sony Ericsson Android 2.3.4 update is here in the active, both in the arc s be filtering all of its Android phones in 2011, is the line keyboard layout.

A perfect clone of the popular Swype, so you can forget the restrictions by using the keyboard QWERY 3-inch screen, and then start typing the letters into words together without lifting your finger from the screen. It 'a great little feature when you get depends on the speed of typing time and reduces errors.

Although, instead of typing errors, you will often find completely inserted the wrong word. So you could find another kind of boring.

But if you need to edit text, tab system Android is here. Touching a text entry field brings a small tab you can use to drag the slider, easy to fix all your rogue uses of "he".

Email is administered through a separate application that supports POP3, IMAP and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync - more a combination of the Inbox to display all your important communications on herbal aphrodisiacs in one convenient location.

Sony Ericsson has done a great job done by e-mail app seems pretty smart when it comes to a preview pane scrolling, which can be dragged on the fly, and the size of your liking.

If you are a mailing of energy, there are options to adjust the frequency of electronic verification to protect the battery, apply a custom ring tone to each account. In addition, you may have to delete messages from the mail server in an account.

Internet

Surf the Internet will always be a compromise between the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active 3-inch with a low-ish to 320 x 480 means that this is one of the less impressive phones for use in a network of Sony Ericsson range.

The text is a bit rough in comparison with high resolution, and mobile Xperia Arc, but the good news is that 1GHz processor does a good job of preparing pages, the pages appear and build quickly. The Xperia active support multi-touch zoom to scroll the page with two fingers, double click on a piece of text automatically based on the view ebb and fit the screen for easy reading.

Xperia assets may also manage sites with Flash embedded videos are working well. There is a big impression on the scroll and zoom, when there are too many stupid flash on the screen, but it's always good to see the full flash here.

Android Browser is a simple thing, in fact, shared bookmarks and history lists to access the card that is in the address bar. Tap this and you head into the world of bland bookmarks, history, and popular pages.

Much more functionality behind the menu button with the Android users can set preferences for page zooming, font sizes, different media off the content and disabling the plug-in, and so on. So it seems simple, but there's enough to make the correct web geek just phone.

Android link sharing tool has a large peak, with some pressure you can share the URL via email, the ping on Twitter and Facebook, and actually send them all compatible programs you have installed on your phone. You can even send a link to the home screen, where it appears as an icon that instantly open the site.

Text handling is another area where Android has really come in later versions. Long pressing a portion of text that shows a pair of legs, which can be dragged about to select a paragraph of copy. Exploiting the selected area is copied to the clipboard.

Camera

Sony Ericsson Xperia asset comes with a 5MP camera with LED flash, which puts it on par with the sensors in Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini and Mini Pro cute.

The camera application is the same as we saw in all Sony Ericsson Android smartphones this year. The default is to automatically sense the scenes with the Scene Recognition option, but it goes off and you can manually choose between the usual modes such as Landscape, Portrait, Party, Sport, Beach & Snow, and a document called specifically to capture text.

You can also get the same tools 2D and 3D Sweep Panorama here, which also featured on the S and Xperia Arc will soon arrive via software updates to Sony Ericsson phones. He tries to reconstruct a super-wide shot horizontally or vertically, resulting in images that are stitched together massive fine.

It 'a pain in the right to work, however, complain all the error messages that you're moving too fast or slow, plus the half broken suddenly full of gray areas exist.

Panorama: If you are unable to tolerate the peculiarities and do not mind shooting for six or seven times, he does a good job of capturing scenes wider.

Macro Mode: Macro does a good job, too, so you can take all sorts of little details.

Landscape: Xperia active camera is good to capture the mood of a scene with light and the darkness that comes all good. But the details are not great when the images viewed in full screen on a desk, with organic functionality, turning to mush and lose sharpness.

ZOOM: There is a digital zoom, which really flies, but there is a significant drop in quality.

Click here for the full resolution version

Portrait: But the face of the shots are great. Red Eye is not a big problem, as seems to be eating the Active skin tone brighter co-lours.

Flash: Flash is a bit aggressive. It is fast and the camera manages to focus well enough in low light, but we found that it produced results very bright LED when fired.

INDOOR: Once again, the active flash, indoor shots are quite difficult.

Resolution version click here

Other places, you can disable the shutter Sony Ericsson Xperia Asset completely switch its digital image stabilization on or off, plus there is a timer, the ability to disable the shutter button fully touch screen, if you are a little awkward, and a nice slide in the gallery of recent photos.

It is also very quick to use, firing rapidly, without delay. In low light it will take more time to focus, but you still feel that the camera is generally quick and responsive.

Video

The Sony Ericsson Xperia assets can record videos up to 720p resolution, which turns the SD card in MP4 format. The LED flash can be left in permanently, so if you're on the set of badgers at night.

As with the Arch S Xperia, 16x digital zoom is crazy here that can be used while recording clips, but the timing of a zoom of more than two or three and made a mess right of the resulting images.

The camera application is largely the same as when Stills, manual white balance options, the Media Centre or spot metering, self-timer, the option does not care about sound recording and digital image stabilization.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Active is a good auto focus during video recording, it is usually able to concentrate in a few seconds. If you're not a fan of constant attention, you can choose a fixed focus to infinity, or attach to a standard face recognition.

The videos are great. At maximum resolution, manufactures Sony Ericsson Xperia active smooth results, with the desktop application VLC Player tell us what frame rates are a constant 29fps.

This is not the strongest cuts and the world, however. As with the camera, background details rather neglected, with trees and grass dirt interpreted as vague.

This is a video editing tool rudimentary hidden in the gallery, which allows you to crop the beginning and end of clips. But that's all it does.

Media

What you get here for your music and fun video game is not much more than the basics Android usual, as a visual tweak and a couple of interesting social networking features grafted on.

As with the likes of the S Arc and Ray Xperia Xperia, Sony Ericsson has added two major social tools on the main screen of the Xperia active player - his "infinite" Like Facebook and a button icon.

Click the button like the fact that you expected, creating a link to the artist and information to continue to spam the site office ...

... While his infinite button performs a quick search on YouTube, Wikipedia and you can passively looking for more facts and figures that playing on your phone.

Support playlist is once again the usual standards for Android. The phone types of artists, albums and songs, with a long press of every song you can add to an existing playlist or create a new right, then. Sony Ericsson Xperia activated automatically generates the most played, recently added to filter all the songs and also to show them that they have ever heard.

There is also a graphic equalizer, for once, does not require the listener has a headset connected, you have a small effect on sound quality. The external speaker is strong, well enough to be embarrassed if you put it in a public place.

Start Screen Music widget is a simple and elegant that you can play / pause and skip tracks without opening the application, although there are no controls in the component or Android notifications on the screen locking. But the Sony Ericsson chucks the box does include a switch play / pause so that users can pause the music without having to fumble with your phone.

Like many other Android smartphone from Sony Ericsson, video playback is a bit 'disappointing. There is no DivX support, so you can manage all this is the default MP4 files. It is a horrible gray box is the standard Android video player, which is really, really need some 'cosmetic work.

If you are looking for and enjoy new music that you do not already know the words, there is a store pre-installed. Sony Ericsson PlayNow store will sell you the MP3 directly, from £ 1.50 a pop, plus data charges you may have. Which is stupidly expensive but tempting easy.

The battery life and connectivity options

Sony Ericsson Xperia technical support that Active is a good 5.5 hours of talk time and 335 hours standby time with 3G, which is pretty good when it sits on a test laboratory in Sweden.

In real terms, the battery quite a good performer. We easily passed the day, all the phone options on the left of the hypothesis of an average day consists of a full load using Twitter, a number of email accounts, sessions, and quite a few text messages to a piece of navigation over Wi-Fi.

Although the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active includes 1200mAh battery, which is at the bottom of what we smart today, is a solid performer. Treat it well and you can get in two days, when even the falsification of documents you must see through the whole day.

There is no HDMI output on the Xperia active, but you get the usual Sony Ericsson devices connected app, which is the way it's DLNA support a little more exciting. It works well, streaming images and videos to other DLNA devices, you have the pacifier in your home Wi-Fi account.

Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n supports connections, while, technically, the handset supports GSM / GPRS / EDGE and UMTS / HSPA for data.

One great thing extra active user Xperia active ANT + connectivity. ANT + system opens the world of gadgets health, such as heart rate monitors and bicycle speedos, which connects wirelessly to your phone, open a new world of sports to use the App.

And as always in these days with Android, Sony Ericsson Xperia active working as both a wired modem via USB, or be transformed into a personal Wi-Fi hotspot to easily share your mobile data allowance with other Wi- Fi gadgets.

There is an FM radio, too, with the integration with the Sony Ericsson TrackID system that can record a song off the radio, he ping its server for identification, and then return with the title and the possibility of buy the phone about 7digital store or Sony PlayNow own.

Radio also connect on Facebook, so you can follow the ID, then post it on Facebook. It 's all very intelligent.

Map and applications

Inside the Sony Ericsson Xperia active centrist 1GHz processor, a total of 1 GB of internal memory, but when you ran it on Android, leaving little more than 300MB to install the app.

Sony Ericsson has stuck in some health applications to help highlight some of the phone active state, prior to loading of the tool awkwardly iMapMyFitness call, which is also freely available to everyone in the Android Market is therefore not much of a selling point.

The pedometer WalkMate much simpler to create a measure of your Sony Ericsson which has not through the accelerometer - and comes with a warning about the heavy damage that this will make your battery life - the more a digital compass around. Nothing really useful to be honest.

Very useful when you have all the standard suite of Google Apps, which consists of Gmail, YouTube, Talk, Calendar and Google Maps excellent.

Maps works well, and Sony Ericsson Xperia 1GHz Active sliding, zooming and panning around the screen without any problems. The GPS system locked in a few seconds, which allows us to produce a satellite navigation system routes quickly and easily.

And once all this is done, the assets Xperia works well as a complete sat nav, Google also offers the opportunity to upgrade to full turn voice navigation throughout the year, thanks to a free download on Android Market.

Elsewhere, there are already a lot of shit from Sony Ericsson. Not Xperia Hot Shots Tennis sponsorship advertising, a mediocre puzzle game Quadrapop, sponsored links to download free apps ... There is a lot of trash and garbage.

OfficeSuite is a utility that gives freedom of read-only files compatible with MS Office, NeoReader QR code scanner, alternative Wisepilot Sat Nav application if this is your kind of thing, and data from the monitor, which performs a usage tracking data, you should be on a limited set.

Installing an application through the Android Market is fast and easy, with the active participation Xperia also manages to run Google applications market had a great time.

We see the condition of 232MB of free space for the App Store, even after re-installation of traditional favorites and the latest update of Adobe Flash Player Big App.

And finally, it is the same screen capture tool, available on the Xperia Arc S. holding the power button brings the menu Android usual power, only with the additional option to take a picture of what appeared on the screen just before you press the power. The plans are then saved as PNG files in the gallery nice phone.

Opinion

Sony Ericsson Xperia smartphone Active is a totally good deal ', which is not compromised in any way, because it targets outdoor / athletic.

2.3.4 The Android software is equipped with additional features and functions will be added as part of the user interface of Sony Ericsson mobile phone, which is a good car, pretty decent video output to 720p, and generally smooth, trouble-free use of all wheels.

We like

The water-resistant capacitive screen is very sensitive to touch, without significant delay or disability oppression and sensitivity "wet finger."

Sony Ericsson Android adjustments are nice, mostly by adding small animations, drag and drop the icon-friendly features, Facebook stuff everywhere and hide many details to discover more cool.

It is really tight. The last thing we did in preparing this study, just in case, we Dunk in the sink for a few minutes. He survived. Everything still works. The rubber stoppers and secondary domestic cases do the work.

We believe that

The screen resolution lower end of 320 x 480 means that the text is not as clear as on many other Android smartphones today. It's not unmanageable, and works well in outdoor light, but if you do a lot to read the small blotches can become a nuisance.

Despite the claims of its constitution, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active feels quite light and plasticky. We are not only tried to destroy, but it seems difficult, external phone. In addition, the plastic buttons around the edges, and the camera button, in particular, seem to be rather inconsistent.

Play the media is still a weak point on a Sony Ericsson phone. You can copy your entire collection of AVI movie to it, not without converting everything to MP4 advance.

Verdict

It 'another good performer, Sony Ericsson. Active Xperia is a bit 'more than the company Xperia Mini, a thick, water-resistant case, but if that's what you want ... is this.

We are used to "out" for mobile phones becoming a terrible shell-free functions, but this is not the case. Sony Ericsson Xperia active is a fast, usable, modern smartphone that just so happens to be a little 'more isolated rain and coffee than most.

The only potential competition comes Xperia Active Motorola Defy Defy + and higher, which is their huge screens and extra-space-consuming to build, to completely different people.

If you want a fully capable, telephone cute, lightweight and compact design that is waterproof and non-compromising performance, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active is a great choice. The only alternative, but still quite good.