Sony Xperia L1 Review: Not ready to be budget champ | Trusted Reviews

Sony Xperia L1 Review: Not propitious to be budget champ


What is the Sony Xperia L1?
You can think of the Sony Xperia L1 as a successor to the elder Xperia E family, but more applicable to the average shopper is the kind of company it keeps pending its price range.
At a wallet-friendly £159, the Xperia L1 is prowling the same territory as budget big cats resembling as the Moto G5 and stylish alternatives such as the Wileyfox Swift 2. Unfortunately for Sony, it can’t quite running up to such celebrated company.
Sony Xperia L1 – Design
I’ll say this for Sony – you meet one of its phones when you see one. For years now, the Japanese manufacturer has stuck with a blocky end language all its own.
If you had to name a phone you’d least like dropped on your promontory from an upstairs fenes-tella, it would probably be a Sony Xperia. Pushed to be a bit more limited, the Sony Xperia L1 might wellspring be the phone you’d select.
This is a seriously substantial bit of kit at 151mm excellent and 8.7mm thick, whiles it weighs a pocket-sagging 180g. It’s all-plastic, but unlike disparate such phones it doesn’t attempt to hide despite fact, which is a laudable example decision.
There’s something reassuringly sturdy about the Xperia L1’s undisguised matte moldable rear panel and lament, gently curved sides. It also has the quality of sharp corners maugre would serve you rightly in the impending intellectual prostitute apocalypse.

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Another principle for the Sony Xperia L1’s heft is its typically large Sony bezel around the display. The ones to the hand aren’t so bad, but the foundation bezel is pretty sizeable for a phone plus no home button, and the phone’s forehead is a actual Frankenstein’s monster of a thing.
Utilitarian looks aside, the Sony Xperia L1 actually feels pretty nice in the hand. Its weightiness fetters the impression of nature, while that matte moldable
ensures that it won’t be slipping out of your grippe any time soon.
The phone’s government button and volume page are placed in the usual place on the right-hand rim of the phone, but they’re sincere and untextured, so it can be tough to distinguish them by feel alone. On the lowest
edge you get the phone’s USB-C port – a acceptable inclusion over micro-USB – and a solitary speaker; there’s a 3.5mm varlet on top.
There’s one major ironmongery omission here: a entire lack of a fingermark sensor. Both the Moto G5 and the Wileyfox Swift 2 have becoming examples at an same price, so there’s wholly no excuse for this. Indeed, even the £85 Vodafone Smart N8 has a cogent fingerprint sensor of its own.
16GB storage is pretty go for a phone of this estimation, and you can manifest that through a microSD slot hidden under a slightly clunky flap.
Sony Xperia L1 – Display
Sony has been one of the bolder manufacturers when it comes to pushing shade technology in recent times. At the top end with the Sony Xperia XZ Premium, it’s fully about the only smartphone maker pushing 4K, whereas most of the repose have settled on 2K (aka QHD).
It’s a shame Sony doesn’t show similar hardihood at the lower end of the market. The Sony Xperia L1 has a 5.5-inch IPS display, but it comes w/ only a 720p resolution.
There’s nowt inherently wrong with similar a spec – the iPhone 7’s screen isn’t far off 720p, behind all – but although such a screen strays over the 5-inch aim you can start to see the individual pixels.



Going back to those aforesaid rivals, the Wileyfox Swift 2 is 720p but in a more pithy – and thus greater pixel-dense – 5-inch feature factor, while the Moto G5 goes one more with a 5-inch 1080p screen. Both are Shorter, but both are sharper.
It’s a shame, for in every other esteem the Sony Xperia L1 screen is pretty good. It’s bright and open, while colour reproduction is strong for a stiff phone. Sony likes the tone to be icy-blue by default, but you can rascal with the white comparison in the Settings menu if you’re after a warmer feel. Viewing angles, too, are excellent.
Sony Xperia L1 – Performance
We don’t expect phones to be super-quick at this worth point, but we’re chronicle the time where the Sony Xperia L1’s mediocre performance could simply have been shrugged off. Not when the likes of the Moto G5 and the Wileyfox Swift 2 kick lengthwise nicely with capable 4-series Snapdragon processors.
Using the Xperia L1 isn’t a bad exercise, but there’s a syn wallowy feel to accurately simple tasks. There are small but noticeable pauses when dragging down to bring up Sony’s concept search function, or while swiping to the sinister to bring up Google Now. The camera seems to take seconds to load up.
It doesn’t take long to recognize the culprit: a MediaTek MT6737T CPU, which is a so low-end piece of silicon. It’s pretty much the same fragment
– although clocked somewhat higher – recently employed in the Vodafone Smart N8, a phone albeit costs around half the price.
You get 2GB of RAM to indorse up that modest CPU , but that’s lovely much the minimum for any Android phone shooting for a smooth experience.



The Xperia L1’s setup does ensure adapted gaming performance, though. Guns of Boom’s slick online FPS action runs moderately well, barring a few stutters whereas the action heats up, while Reckless Racing 3 and Oz: Broken Kingdom were jittery but playable during my time w/ the phone. 2D efforts such as Guns Of Mercy and Wayward Souls ran flawlessly, as you’d expect these days.
A Geekbench 4 multi-core sake of 1881 shows nicely how short the Xperia L1 is of its main emulate, the Moto G5. Motorola’s current budget king managed a score of 2440.



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Sony Xperia L1 – Software
The Xperia L1 runs on Android 7.0 Nougat, who is the latest absolute version of Google’s OS. As far as fashion skins go, Sony’s has been one of the more satisfactorily light examples of present years. It makes for a toothsome all-round navigation experience.
You get a familiar dropdown notification system, an app tray at the valley of the screen – although it scrolls horizontally, which is weird – and Google Now to the sinister of the main homescreen. Multitasking works much the same as it does on stock Android, too.
Yes, you get Sony’s own Music, Album and Video apps, but that’s actually apprehensible from a company plus its fingers in so many media pies.
Sony also persists with its What’s New app, what is a pretty redundant shop front for its chosen apps. Needless to say, its own efforts get pushed to the fore, but tapping to download any of them will simply take you to the Google Play Store anyway. It’s prior pointless.
Xperia Lounge, meantime, brings you a protuberance of custom Sony themes alongside competitions and fashioned media. It’s kind of like a Sony magazine, and I barely looked at it during my time plus the phone.

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Sony Xperia L1 – Camera
Sony is one of the more players when it comes to smartphone cameras, mostly because it supplies various of the sensors to the second manufacturers. Curiously, though, its own top-end smartphones rarely mix it with the very best.
The benefits of Sony’s camera uninjured mastery often comes threatening down the market, and sure sufficiently, the Sony Xperia L1’s 13-megapixel f/2.2 main camera can turn out about decent results in imaginary lighting.
In particular, I was pressed by how natural the captured colours looked. The detail on some of the close-ups I snapped was yet decent, while it’s option to capture images w/ real depth if you line them up right.
However, the Xperia L1’s camera falls down in the two usual pedantic phone areas: low prosperity and large variances in light. Most of the indoor shots I took – fully those in moderate lighting – yielded a lot of noise. Meanwhile, any shots besides bright skies or refined whites tended to conclusion in disconcerting bleach-out effects, where the camera couldn’t cope with both knowledge and dark areas simultaneously.
There’s no HDR mode on offer now to help counter thought, which is a bright omission even at this price.
There’s also a 5-megapixel front-facing camera for those selfie moments, which is to par for the title in the sub-£200 bracket. It won’t yield any printable results, that’s for sure, but I expect that isn’t really the point.

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Sony’s camera UI is strictly pleasant to use, however. You swipe up and down on the sinister of the screen to hop atwixt photos, videos, and Manual mode, which leaves the right act free to host the virtual blind button and any settings.
The before-mentioned Manual mode offers superintendence over white balance, exposure value, shutter speed and focus, and there’s a permanent glance control in the valley left-hand corner.
Samples


Get the lighting right and photos can have authentic depth



Colours are accurate



The indigence of an HDR independence is glaring



An indoors dejectile with insufficient lighting comes out reasonably well, but notice the overexposed bail in the centre



Good interest and depth, but issues with overexposure and noise

Sony Xperia L1 – Battery Life
With its low-grade processor and low-resolution exhibition, you’d expect the Sony Xperia L1 to terminal a fair old whereas in between charges.
Despite goods a surprisingly modest 2620mAh battery – which makes you wonder why the phone is so slow – I wasn’t disappointed.
On one occasion I recorded 58% remaining dominion after 24 hours of light to moderate treatment – with seven of those hours spent on an aeroplane overnight, as is my usual practice. Sure enough, when I didn’t put the Xperia L1 on charge overnight I was able to get two full days of usage out of it, and I inert had 13% remaining at the end of the second day.



In terms of specific tasks, 15-20 minutes of Guns of Boom gameplay ate up 9% of the phone’s odd battery life, with the screen at half brightness. That’s not too bad.
You’ll farther get Sony’s Stamina Mode kicking in – or at slightest offering to kick in – although the battery drops to 15%. This offers to restrict transaction and certain functions to prolong works life.
Sony’s new accumulation phone might underwhelm in a multitude of key areas, but battery experience isn’t one of them.
Should I buy the Sony Xperia L1?
For £159, you’re getting a well-built smartphone with a bright spread out and strong battery life. That sounds like expanded value until you pry into the alternatives.
Both the Moto G5 and the Wileyfox Swift 2 provide better action and classier designs for the ditto money, as well as advanced features such as a fingermark sensor.
The Sony Xperia L1 isn’t a bad phone by any theme, but there’s simply no good argument why you’d choose it over one of its illustrious rivals.
Verdict
The Sony Xperia L1 is a luscious enough phone to use, but it comes accurately underarmed to an increasingly deadly budget phone fight.



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