Sony Xperia Ion Review.

Sony Xperia Ion Review

The Sony Xperia Ion is currently priced at nearly $100. This is more than just the first handset to continue carrying its Sony brand name after it separated itself from the other widely name it was known to have been paired with over the years: Ericsson. The Xperia is the first smartphone from the company that features 4G Long Term Evolution capabilities. 

 

Although it may be similar in comparison to its other siblings, this model from the United States is not as flashy. That’s the sad part since the Sony Xperia S and the Xperia P performed and looked great when both were premiered several months before at the CES. The two models looked great since it came with sleek looks with a crystal clear illuminating bar seen at the bottom.

 

In terms of design:

 

The Sony Xperia is styled nicely with its glossy black cover. Even though it is lacking the usual darker and all-out design from Sony phones produced in Europe, the Ion still has its style with a classic look set in a subtle modern tone. You will observe that the phone doesn’t have the usual notification bar compared to other models of the Xperia such as the P, S and U. The bar remains invisible and its LED will blink only when you’re alerted for incoming messages, e-mails or missed calls.  This feature, sadly is only available on models outside of the United States.

 

In terms of its features and software:

 

If you’re an Android fiend, you’ll be sorely disappointed the handset doesn’t come with the latest operating system from Google called the Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0. Instead, it came bundled with an older version running on the Android Gingerbread 2.3.7. Despite this, Sony indicated it brings similar Ice Cream Sandwich features not seen in other Gingerbread versions.

 

In terms of its camera features:

 

One of its few standout features that you’ll notice with the Ion is its 12 megapixel camera (with flash function). The camera operates at a very high resolution and is reported to have a fast capture time on its sensor. Even though the phone can quickly take snapshots in less than a second, its auto feature mode is a little big sluggish lagging at over one second. This makes it less ideal for proper picture taking making this less stellar compared to higher end models such as that of the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the HTC One X.  Both these devices can rapidly take high quality shots at less than a second.

But if you look at the handset closely, it does have cool settings that you can use to adjust the function of the camera which includes Landscape, Portrait Night and a whole lot more. You’ll also find extra camera modes that make it easier to capture shots such as its 3 dimensional panoramic and normal panorama feature.

 

In terms of performance:

 

Despite some camera features, the handset runs on a snappy 1.5 GHz dual core Snapdragon S3 processor.

 

 

In conclusion:

 

For a phone sold at an affordable price, it’s pretty worth spending your money since it runs on a fast 4G network despite some issues.