REVIEWS / SMARTPHONES / SONY ERICSSON

Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo V Review

01 Dec, 2011, 10:25 am IST | by Shayne Rana | Smartphones

Smartphones

Neat design but should have been a little slimmer

Neat design but should have been a little slimmer
The Music player has plenty of features, the radio's UI could have been better designed
Well blended color option
A tag of the plump side
UI functions quite smoothly
From the Mobile Bravia Engine to Gingerbread, it's all there
3D Panorama Sweep can take some getting used to
Quite a few extras thrown in
Well connected for Facebook

PRICE IN INDIA

Free

TECH2 RATING

7.0

AVERAGE USER RATING

8.5

How we test

CONTACT

Sony Ericsson

 Consumers can mail the queries from the website 

 1800 111 800 (MTNL/BSNL);+91 3901 1111 (others) Â

 http://www.sonyericsson.com

One of the newer devices that recently rolled out of the Sony Ericsson shed is the Xperia Neo V. Designed to offer high-end like features at a reasonable price, the Neo V could mean serious competition for the likes of Motorola, Spice, among others. Here’s a closer look at the latest handset in the Xperia Smartphone series.

Design
The Neo V is the Xperia Pro sans slide out QWERTY keypad The rounded ends gives it a neat “oval” shape, but what didn’t work for us was the rather bulk design and 126g of weight it carries. The Neo V just looks a little odd in the ranks of today’s slim handset configurations. A Mini HDMI and micro USB are located at the top of the device on either side of the 3.5mm handsfree socket. The screen lock/power button and camera activation/shutter release keys are on the left hand side of the handset with the volume rocker in between. Sony Ericsson has removed the ‘Search’ button and stuck to just three physical keys under the 3.7-inch LED Backlit display (480 x 854 pixel resolution). A VGA front facing camera is also present just above the display to the right of the earpiece.

A tag of the plump side

A tag of the plump side

 


Thankfully, the Neo V features a hot swap memory card slot (up to 32GB cards) under the rear panel. The panel itself, though can be a little tricky to open, so you might want to avoid that task too often. Sony’s Human Curvature design does make the handset slightly easier to grip, though.

Features and Performance
Interface
With a 1GHz Scorpion processor powering Android’s Gingerbread OS (2.3.4), the Xperia Neo V functions quite well… most of the time. One rather odd circumstance did seem to plague the device though - constant reboots, while using Wi-Fi and then switching the handset to standby. This happened for quite sometime during our testing, but ceased after a while. It seems this particular issue is due to some bug in this particular device, as we weren’t the only ones who came face to face with the Neo V’s Reboot Fairy.
From the Mobile Bravia Engine to Gingerbread, it's all there

From the Mobile Bravia Engine to Gingerbread, it's all there

 


Other than that, handling was super smooth and even a few slightly heavy games worked without a hitch. On the whole the handset performed quite well with scores not unlike the Xperia Pro. A Linpak Single Thread run gave us a score of 33.97 MFLOPS and ____ in Multi-Thread. The custom UI could use a little tweaking and so can Sony Ericsson’s TimeScape interface, which is definitely due for an overhaul as well.

Media
The native music player that Sony Ericsson has customized for the Android UI is quite well balanced for overall audio performance. We were not too thrilled with the bundled handsfree, but with our own set of test earphones we did find a considerable boost in audio quality. EQ presets are provided to help enhance the quality as well, but the difference they make to tone quality is not by large margin. Nevertheless, the fact that they’ve been included is a feather in the Neo’s cap. The Infinity button gives you access to all kinds of information about the track you’re listening to from lyrics to YouTube videos, etc. Sony has also thrown in TrackID for music recognition via the built in FM radio (which might not have had the best interface, but worked like a charm reception-wise) or from external sources.
The Music player has plenty of features, the radio's UI could have been better designed

The Music player has plenty of features, the radio's UI could have been better designed

 


Video codec support is seriously lacking in the Sony Ericsson family, not that the Android Market doesn’t come to its rescue with the likes of MoboPlayer or RockPlayer, but we do believe it’s about time aspect was refreshed to include more format support. The stock player reads MP4, 3GP and WMV video files up to an 800 x 480 resolution.
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Design - UI and Media


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Would you buy it?




 


How We Test

The Tech2 Labs receives many products every single week and each of them is tested with the utmost care and highest level of objectivity. There’s a constant effort to reduce and totally eliminate subjectivity. Each product is tested according to set test processes so the same test scenario is used.

Verdict
The ratings awarded to a product are derived from a number of tests and calculations, keeping certain important factors in mind. These factors consist of features, performance, quality and value for money. In case of software and some other categories, build quality might be replaced with ease of use or ease of installation. Products are compared with other products in a similar price range or product category.


Features
The features component of the score is rated based on the kind of features present on a particular product. Features are a big part of what people look for when they’re buying a new product such as a phone or a camera.

Performance
The performance score is derived from the benchmarks and tests run on the product. In case of the subjective scores, an average of the scores given by the group of reviewers is considered.

Build Quality
The build quality of a product is important so that it doesn’t fall apart after some use. The build quality scores from the way the product is designed and the kind of materials used in the product.

Value
Value for money comes from the fact that a cheap product is able to provide most of the performance of a higher priced product. Once again, value for money is judged by comparing pricing and performance of products in a particular price range or category. 

There are many other aspects of the product that are looked at such as the bundled software and accessories. All of these scores are aggregated together to form the final score.

What do the ratings mean?

Ratings are simple - higher the score, the better the product. A brief listing of the features and what they mean are given below.

1 - 3

The product is bad in almost every aspect. We strongly advise against purchasing this product.

4 - 6

An average product that isn't the best you can buy, but isn't the worst either.

7 - 8

Product with this rating is highly recommended because it's priced sensibly, has a good set of features and performs well.

9 - 10

Exceptionally excellent product with features and performance unlike any we've seen in the past. A must-have for everyone!

What is the Average User Rating?

We at Tech2 take product reviewing very seriously and every product is tested with the utmost care and level of objectivity. The end user who buys a particular product and uses it over an extended period of time has his own take on a product and there might be nuances that he or she can shed light on. The Average User Rating is present to help readers get the complete picture of how good or bad a product is. The Average User Rating is calculated by averaging the ratings by the thousands of readers visiting Tech2.com every single day. To record your own rating of a product, simply click on the user rating bar. If you disagree with our ratings or our community's product rating, please don't hesitate from voicing your opinion in the comments section below the review.

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