Introduction
A trimmed-down version of the Bond phone or a remake of the Xperia Arc, the Sony Xperia J knows looks are important to reasonable spenders, too, and doesn't get carried away with the level of equipment. What it offers over a very similarly equipped Sony Xperia miro is a bigger and higher-res screen, which sure sounds like the right thing to get users interested.
On top of that, the Xperia J has borrowed design cues from the current flagship and an old-time favorite, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. So, although Sony has pretty good coverage of the low-to-midrange market, the Xperia J is easily an attention-grabber.
You may have lost count of all the Xperia droids released over the past year - less than a year actually, which is quite impressive - but the Xperia J isn't likely to slip under your radar if you're on the market for an affordable smartphone. The J is a sensible package with an important advantage over similarly equipped and similarly priced competitors.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band UMTS support
- 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
- 4.0" 16M-color TFT capacitive touchscreen of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) at around 245 ppi
- Android OS v4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich
- 1 GHz Cortex-A5 CPU, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227A chipset
- 512 MB of RAM
- 4GB of inbuilt storage (2GB user available)
- microSD slot (32GB supported)
- 5 MP autofocus camera, single LED flashlight, geotagging, touch focus
- VGA video @ 30fps
- Secondary VGA front-facing camera
- Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
- GPS with A-GPS
- Accelerometer and proximity sensor
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
- 1750 mAh Li-Ion battery
Main disadvantages
- Noticeable lag
- Non-hot-swappable microSD slot
- Image quality a bit of a letdown
- No hardware shutter key
- No DivX/XviD support
- Feeble loudspeaker
No deals are perfect in this price range, which on the other hand is brimming with offerings, so the Xperia J will have to consistently show the right attitude. Sony gave the screen and design probably its best shot within the budget but there's more to a smartphone than that.
