Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Sony launches its first BEZEL-less smartphone in Xperia XA1 ultra!!!


Sony has been struggling with its smartphone division for quite a while now. To cut losses, it chose to stop making its ‘Premium Standard’ smartphones to focus only on its flagship lineup. This year, Sony already launched two flagships in the form of Xperia XZs and the Xperia XZ Premium, with the Xperia XZ1 series becoming official in Berlin this week. Sony also launched the Xperia XA1 Ultra, a device with mid-range specifications and a premium price tag.


XA1 comes with 23-megapixel camera, there is nothing that’ll catch your attention on the spec sheet. It has a 6-inch display with a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on top for protection. The bigger screen at that resolution manages to push out 367 pixels per inch and you also get the option to tweak the display output and white balance.

Sony has opted for the MediaTek Helio P20, the same chip it uses for the Xperia XA1. The Helio P20 is an octa-core processor with four cores clocked at 2.3GHz and the other four cores clocked at 1.6GHz. It has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage which is expandable via the dedicated microSD card slot up to 256GB. The XA1 Ultra has two nano SIM slots with support for 4G and VoLTE on both slots. Apart from this, the XA1 Ultra sports Bluetooth 4.2, NFC and WiFi ac support for connectivity.

The XA1 Ultra houses a non-removable 2700mAh battery with Qnovo Adaptive charging tech which reduces the charging speed when the battery nears 100 percent charge. Sony XA1 Ultra runs on Android 7.0 Nougat with its custom Xperia UI on top. It has the essence of stock Android but Sony has added a few of its own customizations on top. You can swipe right from the home screen to access Google Now or swipe from the top to trigger a search. Sony has customised a few settings like battery, where you will find the inclusion of Stamina Mode and Ultra Stamina mode that help increase battery life. The storage and memory settings have also been worked upon and we found them to be user-friendly. You also get a few apps like SonyLIV, its entertainment app; Playstation, a Sony Playstation Companion App; and AVG Protection, an anti-virus app pre-installed. Sadly, you can’t uninstall these apps, but only disable them.

Sony has opted for a 23-megapixel camera at the back with contrast + phase detection hybrid auto focus but misses out on laser auto focus. You also get a single LED flash and not the dual tone flash which has become more common now. At the front, the 16-megapixel selfie gets a front flash and features Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) which the rear camera misses out on. It also mentioned that the Ultra is a selfie-focused smartphone and there is a higher need of stabilisation since a selfie is clicked with one hand.

The camera app is made by Sony and has Superior Auto mode like found on most other Xperia smartphones. Apart from that, it has a manual mode which allows you to adjust white balance, exposure, shutter speed, ISO and manual focus.

The Xperia XA1 Ultra is a big screen device aimed at people specifically looking for entertainment purposes. Its big bezel-less display is ideal for watching content and playing games but could have done with some stereo speakers. Sony has tuned the Helio P20 chip and Xperia UI to deliver good battery backup but the lack of a fingerprint scanner and 4K video recording are two of the major drawbacks of this smartphone.

The Xperia XA1 Ultra isn’t a bad phone, but competition makes it appear overpriced. For the same price, the OnePlus 3T comes with a fingerprint scanner, 4K recording and significantly better performance in snapdragon 821 processor. If you don't mind stretching your budget a little, the Honor 8 Pro offers much better value. But if it is the big display that you want, then the Xiaomi Mi Max 2 will save you a lot of money.
In case you want to buy it check the link.
 
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