Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo V

Sony Ericsson Xperia NeoV

 

Specifications

Display:           3.7" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen
                         of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) on Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine 

OS:                  Android OS v2.3.4 Gingerbread

Processor:       1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset

RAM:              512 MB RAM

Camera:          5 MP autofocus camera, LED flash, geo-tagging, 3D Sweep Panorama
                         720p video @ 30fps, continuous autofocus with continuous autofocus and stereo sound
                          Front facing VGA camera, video chat (Google, Skype)

Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA

GPS with A-GPS

Memory: microSD slot (32GB supported, 2GB card included) 

 Connectivity: Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
                        3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
                        microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1

 Accelerometer and proximity sensor

Audio jack: Standard 3.5 mm audio jack

Radio: Stereo FM radio with RDS


Voice dialing

Adobe Flash 11 support

microHDMI port

Deep Xperia Facebook integration

Design

Sony Ericsson Neo V has a 3.7-inch LED-backlit LCD, capacitive touchscreen and on the front, there are three push buttons below the screen and above the screen, there is Sony Ericsson logo, front facing camera and an earpiece. This is a gorgeous looking phone with all the right curves in the right places thus making an attractive curvaceous design that is highly reminiscent of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. It feels decently light enough at 126 grams and fits comfortably in your palm as well. Build quality is good and this device is made up of Metal and Plastic. The back panel does have some issues and gives a poor feeling.

The build however isn't that impressive. The plastic-y finishes attracted scratches quite easily at the back of the device. There is a constant need to wipe your fingerprints off the phone every now and then, including the shiny plastic on either side. The battery cover started picking up scratches when the phone was kept on a surface. Keeping it on its face made the keys, on the front, lose their shine.

The right side houses the power/lock button which wasn't that easy to press every time. The power button on the side was a bit too difficult to press easily, the volume buttons were slightly inconveniently located and your index finger always finds the camera lens on the back to rest upon, and it will mostly be covered in fingerprints and smudges.

There is no button on the left. On the top features a headphones jack, an HDMI out and a micro USB port. The phone is slick in its design and pretty compact to carry around.

 

Display

The device sports a 3.7-inch TFT LCD display on gorilla glass, supporting a resolution of 854x480 pixels and 265 ppi pixel density making the images look sharp and crisp. The display quality is pretty neat and the colors appear quite rich with a 16:9 aspect ratio ensures that images and videos cover up the entire display without the interference of the black bars at the top and bottom. The colors are neutral, the color temperature seems normal, the contract and black levels are good and it’s also usable under bright light. The viewing angles, however, are quite poor.The image quality was underwhelming for a Sony Ericsson phones. The detail level in the images was disappointing.

There are no problems during sliding or scrolling the UI or Menu bar. It uses a Scratch-resistant glass. Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine is also there to make the images and videos bolder but this Bravia Engine is quite useless as there is no effect, even when it’s turned on and the images and videos do look the same they looked before.

The screen is too reflective of objects in the background, which is quite distracting. Though videos ran smoothly, the reflective glass is a bit disappointing since it almost acts as a mirror and the most annoying is the automatic brightness control system that cannot be disabled. The minimum brightness levels are adjusted automatically. At the end, images appear either too dark or too light. It would have been nicer and more useful if they had given the option to disable the automatic brightness adjustment feature.

 

 

Camera

The Neo V has a 5MP camera and not a 8MP camera, but what remains unchanged is the auto-focus, LED flash and 720p video recording. There's a 0.3 MP front-facing camera for video chatting. The phone has a dedicated shutter button on the right side. The image quality was underwhelming for a Sony Ericsson phones. The detail level in the images was disappointing. Indoor shots with the flash could have been a little better, though. The pictures do tend to appear a bit smudged. The lens however is unable to focus on images that are too close. Videos in 720p were quite smooth and the auto-focus works well here.The camera functions are pretty basic and simple. These include Self-timer, Multiple Scene Modes, Smile Detection, Touch Capture, Flash menu, Multiple Resolution modes, Sweep Panorama and 3D Sweep Panorama. 

 

Software

The Xperia Neo V runs on Android's Gingerbread and looking ahead for an update to ICS. The Xperia neo V runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 with a 1GHz CPU and Adreno 205 GPU and there is also 512MB of RAM, which is sufficient for moderately for multitasking. Sony custom skin is definitely one of the most chic in the Android fraternity. There are 5 customizable home screens on the device. The Timescape UI which gives individual information in the form of cards and it appears quite stylish. It includes various categories such Twitter and Facebook feeds, Messages and Missed calls.Other interesting features include the ability to take screenshots while pressing and holding the power button and selecting the screenshot option. In case you have too many apps or icons on the home screen, you can organize them in folders.  It has a standard Google apps such as Mail, Maps, YouTube and Android Market. There is also quite a lot of bloat ware, although most of it can be uninstalled. The browser is pretty much stock, except for the WebGL support, which is something unique. The browser performance is acceptable but it is never perfectly smooth unless you are browsing a site that mostly has text, such as the Reddit comments section. Though currently running on Gingerbread (Android 2.3.4), an Ice-Cream Sandwich upgrade is possible.

 

Performance

The Xperia neo V has a 1,500 mAh Li-Po battery. In my regular use that mostly consisted of browsing over 3G, using third-party apps such as TweetDeck and watching videos, the battery lasted a full day on a single charge. While running the video playback test, the Xperia neo V managed to last for 6 and half hours on a full charge before powering off. The signal and call quality of the device is impressive.The audio quality of the phone is very good.  The xLOUD setting can be adjusted and further enhance the volume. The music player displays a large view of the album art and also adjusts the background colour according to the album art. Speaking of memory, the device has an internal memory of 320MB; a micro SD card slot inclusive of a 2GB memory card which is expandable up to 32GB.