Sony Xperia XA1 Review: Mid-range winner? | Trusted Reviews

Sony Xperia XA1 Review: Mid-range winner?


What is the Sony Xperia XA1?
Sony’s 2017 mid-range device is a camera focused phone, something you don’t often get at this price. For that motive alone, the Xperia XA1 is import considering.
Yet, there are plenty of areas place the compromises are exceedingly obvious.
In a competitory market, where the likes of the Motorola Moto G5 (£180) and Lenovo P2 (£200 on the Three network) remain the most allurement choices, the XA1 faces tough competition.
As is often the case plus smartphones, the best upfront price will find you locked to a remedy mobile network. In this case it’s O2, wherever you’ll be able to pick up an XA1 for £220, with a minimum £10 top-up for a constitute of £230. If you want it unlocked, you can power to Carphone Warehouse, whereas the device will set you overdue £250.
Sony Xperia XA1 – Design
The XA1 has a 5-inch protect, which has become a rarity these days; I suspect it’s easier to make a big-battery call with a large hide – as it the case besides the 5.5-inch Lenovo P2.
Sony deals with this challenge by making the top and bottom share of the bezel greater generous (by phone standards), while keeping the larboard and right portions super-slim. This gives the XA1 a before elongated look, which I honestly didn’t mind. The design doesn’t affect my ability to use the phone, because the screen is a standard dimension, nor does it source any issues when slipping the device into my pocket.

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The design won’t be for everyone, and I order I had one of the better attractive, coloured models in lieu of of the plain favorite version. The rear of the French telephone is made of moldable the sides are metal. There are gaps unhidden all over the telephone – and it didn’t take long for the XA1 to become tainted, with white paint fragment off above the SIM slot. Not a admirable start, but it did survive a fall under a seat on the tube, what was impressive considering the amount of grit to be cast on train floors.
All the servant are on the sound edge of the invention, with a volume chair, classic Xperia circular might button and a devoted camera button. The later allows you to receive a light and center reading, after which you can receive the picture.



On the sinister is the SIM breach, which has space for a microSD card up to 256GB; this is alongside the generous 32GB of internal memory. A 3.5mm headset jack can be institute at the top.
At the soon, the camera sits tucked into the back screen, with a protective material ring around it to further discrepancy it from scratchy tables and floors.
You’ll attend I haven’t mentioned a fingerprint scanner; that’s because there isn’t one. This is nicely unusual these days, wit for a phone costing this amount. I’ve versed scanners on phones as cheap as £100, so for Sony not to include one is disappointing.
Sony Xperia XA1 – Screen
The XA1’s sift is a 1280 x 720-pixel affair. Screen snobs will exercise stopped reading by this point, but for the rest of us this display is totally fine. Yes, text isn’t as sharp as it could be and hi-res images might not look numerous, but your Facebook and Instagram feeds will look just fine. The display can’t race to the Moto G5’s 5-inch, 1920 x 1080 resolution screen, however.



For day-after-day performance, it’s fine. I could comprehend it in direct sunshine at maximum brightness, though at night I cast even minimum brightness a little too bright for my sensible, sleepy eyes.
Whites experience a slightly blue dye to them and viewing angles are fairly straitened but, again, colour images are well represented and there are no outstanding problems.
On the sound front, the downward-facing speakers are nothing more than mediocre. The microphone is a second story, however: it does a fantastic job of cutting out background contradiction and picking up the voices you want to hear.



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Sony Xperia XA1 – Camera
The Xperia XA1’s 23-megapixel, f/2.0 camera is its most celebration feature. However, the software that’s built around it really compromises the experience.



First, the good. Sony is the uncontroverted king of smartphone camera sensors, and the Exmor-branded chip included here is brilliant for the money. Images taken in sunlight are packed with relation and display wonderfully oscillating colours.
Autofocus is super-fast, and there’s a manual custom that lets you explore into numerous settings. I preferred liberty Superior Auto switched on and, on the absolute, it did a admirable job. Superior Auto’s merely problem is that it won’t let you grow on HDR (high active range) manually. This is annoying.
Shooting outside on a elegant May morning at Rochester Castle, I struggled to get a decent missile of the castle versus the puffy white clouds and blue sky. With my trusty OnePlus 3, I could simply turn on HDR to get a prying castle and a flat sky. In the conjuncture of the XA1, I found myself constantly battling the automatic rifle mode – and in the end just gave up, settling for a blown-out sky.

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That’s a minor critique, but there’s a greater fundamental problem: its speed. The camera takes an age to launch if you haven’t opened it in a few minutes. Upwards of three seconds to see what the sensor can see, although another couple to you don't say get the shutter bud to appear on-screen.
Being beauteous, I’m sure there’s a good purpose for this: getting despite excellent sensor and the image processing software fired up mustiness be a challenge, but why encumber such a great camera into a phone despite then prevents you of using it at a crucial moment?
I was hoary with low-light performance, however. A dimly-lit pub proved no great challenge for the sensory, with it producing relatively lively and blur-free photos.



There’s good coverage of prosperity and dark spots in this Kodak (although our website’s cast compression doesn’t show it off quite well)





When you get stuff right, landscape shots face great…




But the camera can sometimes be changeable with how it handles the sky




Good appoint, but the sky proves a problem againThe camera is quick to core and can pull about delightful bokeh effects

The 8-megapixel selfie camera is a surprise, w/ a wide lens even if lets you cram in numerous leod, and decent processing tech that makes faces appearance clear.
Video can be shot at up to Full HD at 30fps, and there’s a becoming amount of image stabilisation at work to sophisticate for smooth and unfailing videos. You can as shoot photos while you record video.
Sony Xperia XA1 – Software
The XA1 comes with Google’s latest Android 7.0. It’s a enormously unfettered experience, with a few additions here and there (notification badges on the likes of Facebook and Twitter, like on iOS, and the talent to show and involve certain elements of the notification bar), but it’s all earlier pleasing.
While guardianship the actual design individual, Sony has crammed in a boat-load of its own software. Not all of it is bad, however. The ability to pick themes from Sony’s theme shop is great, but thither was lots of opposite stuff I could know done without. Xperia Lounge, What’s New and PlayStation, for example, seem to be variations on the theme of shoving blunt content, apps and ads into your face.
It’s a relief, while, that all of Sony’s pre-installed content apps can be uninstalled.




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Sony Xperia XA1 – Performance
Aside with the slow camera, the XA1 does have a few another minor performance niggles. The first is that apps hang when you principal open them, which is similar to the camera. Websites in the Chrome browser loaded pretty quick with minimal lag, bu – even on the ad-heavy TrustedReviews.
However, there was an occurrence where the phone seized up to such an extent although even a 15-second calendar of the power knob didn’t seem to do anything; the software and hardware apparently completely disconnected for although period.
Experiencing like issues only a sevennight into my time w/ the XA1 doesn’t discharge me with confidence. Even under less extreme action, I found switching apps could sometimes take sundry seconds, and the telephone would be unresponsive over this time.

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3GB of memory doesn’t appear to be becoming for today’s apps, what means app switching can be accurately a slow process.

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In the benchmark tests the XA1 managed 59,274 in AnTuTu, who puts it a part way behind the Lenovo P2, but it’s major powerful than the Moto G5 by quite a margin. But power doesn’t count for much if there are software stableness problems.
Wi-Fi, too, proved an issue. Not nakedly was the XA1 frugal to connect to networks, it often failed to pick the best meshwork when I found myself in a location plus multiple access points, resembling as a house plus Wi-Fi extenders. The scheme was also very temperate to realise that I’d walked aside from a Wi-Fi reticulation and didn’t disconnect for far too long.
The XA1 besides had an annoying custom of disabling mobile data when connected to a Wi-Fi reticulation, even if that reticulation had no access. This is particularly irritating if, say, you walk narrative a Starbucks and get automatically adjunct to its free netting but don’t sign in. The ring will complain it has no internet access but then outcome to do nothing docile it.
In terms of mobile data, the XA1 comes w/ Cat 6 LTE, whether is faster than the Cat 4 radio colonize in the Moto G5. That makes it roughly double the speed of the G5 at a maximum of 300Mbps, and data has proven albeit having a higher-spec 4G radio so improves overall network stability.
Sony Xperia XA1 – Battery Life
The Xperia XA1’s 2300mAH battery is smaller than the 2800mAH pack of cells in the Moto G5. But with a lower-resolution sift, I didn’t experience any problems gain through a full day of streaming music and browsing the web on my commutes. Although, spending an full out and about appealing photos and checking maps, I did find myself reaching for the platter by about 8pm.



But you can plan forthright, and the Xperia’s Stamina Mode is very comprehensive at cutting out distemper tasks and generally custody things neat and orderly on the battery front. If you know you have a long day (or night) ahead of you, film on Stamina Mode and you’ll be fine.
An hour of Netflix at half glory consumed 10% of the battery, so expect 10 hours of non-stop streaming.
Should I buy the Sony Xperia XA1?
If possession the best possible smartphone camera for the rhino is a priority, although the XA1 is a no-brainer. You’ll have to put up with a slightly fiddly manual camera mode and deal w/ the HDR-hating Auto form – plus, be attentive of its slow pierce times. But if you can foremost past all that, there’s no better phone for the money.
For everyone else, there are too many drawbacks for this phone to receive a recommendation. The screen isn’t brilliant, processor and Wi-Fi performance is so-so, and the previously mentioned camera niggles will be annoying for more occasional point-and-shoot fans.
The Lenovo P2 has an amazing tool, a better screen and performance for £200, loiter the Moto G5 further has a better protect and comes in £50 cheaper.
The XA1 has numerous positives, but it’s a few software updates from being a complete package.
Verdict
A brilliant camera with a mediocre ring attached.



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