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.
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