Sony Xperia Go Review

The display used here is a 3.5-inch LED-backlit TFT screen sporting a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. It is scratch-resistant, but that does not mean that it cannot get scratched at all. The scratch-resistant panel is safe from scratches and minor damage caused during everyday wear and tear such as being wiped, slid into the pocket, and kept along with other things in a bag or purse. However, the screen can get scratched with sharp objects such as keys or if it falls to the ground. The display screen is slightly elevated by around a millimetre, and it does not feature any physical buttons for the Home, Back or Menu functions. The touch sensitive buttons are kept in mind for the complete watertight shell which could give-in if the buttons were physical. The display is multi-touch and can be operated by four fingers simultaneously giving you more freedom while gaming on the phone. The display uses the Sony Mobile Bravia Engine for better quality and crisp details. Hence, even though the display has a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels, the pixels are not easily seen unless inspected minutely.

the insides are pretty safe with every port and entrance water-tight

The waterproof shell has physical buttons for changing the volume and power. But these buttons simply press internally sealed buttons, keeping it watertight. The speaker, mic and earpiece are the only areas that need to be left open, but those too have been cleverly shielded by a water-resistant mesh. The body is compact (only 9.8mm), elegant, and weights only 110 grams.

The headphones are decent, have small ear buds, and fit snugly in the ear. The cables are long and soft. The audio quality is great. Unlike handsets from other brands, you won’t need to opt for another pair of headphones to get better audio quality. Do note that the earphones are not waterproof.  You may use them in the rain, but it is not recommended as you would need to open the earphone flap, which could let water into the phone easily.

Features and Performance
Though a comparatively low-priced phone, the Xperia Go is definitely not an underperformer. It runs on a dual-core 1GHz Cortex A9 processor, coupled with a Mali-400 GPU for a good performance. The chipset used is NovaThor U8500, and the RAM supplied is 512MB. The phone has a built-in memory of a good 8GB, which can be expanded further by 32GB using the microSD slot.

We ran a few benchmarks on it. NenaMark spewed a score of 70,049, which is marginally higher than the rest of the phones in the Xperia series. Linpack too gave a score of 65.8 MFLOPS and 41.3 MFLOPS, which are both around 30 percent higher than the others. Quadrant shelled out a total score of 2,574 while AntuTu resulted in 5,745. A table listing the comparative scores is given for your reference.

Comparison table for performance

Interface
The operating system featured here is the outdated Gingerbread. We expected to see at least Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), if not Jellybean. The manufacturer claims that it would release the ICS update soon, but there is no word on an upgrade to Jellybean yet. However, once you use the phone with the proprietary TimeScape UI, you won’t know what is under the hood. The user interface is very smooth and fluid, thanks to the additional support from the onboard GPU, and the sensitive touchscreen. The ICS update should be able to take the performance of the phone to a higher level.

Fitness Apps from Adidas

Sony has been equipping most of its phones with fitness applications by making an intelligent use of the built-in accelerometer. The app on this phone is by Adidas, and has an improved user interface and many features. It helps you keep yourself fit by analysing the walking or running speed when the phone is strapped to your waist. The app also uses the Internet to determine your average speed by matching it to the online natural speed database. Also there is an automated miCoach utility within the app to help you maintain your fitness with built-in diet plans.

Timescape UI and the device info