Sony's Xperia T Is A Muscular Monster Of A Smartphone Cinema goers may recognise Sony’s latest Android smartphone as ‘the one from the new James Bond film’,hp envy 17-2101ea sata slot bd-re blu-ray drive burner player but the Xperia T is not just for a two hour film, but a two year contract. Putting aside the trappings of 007, how does their latest flagship measure uphp envy 17-2101ea sata slot bd-rom blu-ray combo drive? Sony Mobile Communications loaned me a review unit of the Xperia T, hp envy 17-2101ea sata slot cd dvdrw/ram drive burnerand its specifications are slap bang in the middle of the acceptable for a high-end smartphone. Based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 system, there’s a dual-core 1.5GHz Krait CPU running the operation, an Adreno 225 for graphics, 1GB of Ram, and 16GB of internal storage. That’s a configuration you’llhp envy 17-1181nr sata slot bd-re blu-ray drive burner player see on many smartphones, and not just those running Android. It’s spookily similar to the Windows Phone 8 footprint used by Nokia and HTC. There are two areas where the Xperia T falls a bit short. The first is in the battery.hp envy 17-1181nr sata slot bd-rom blu-ray combo drive The 1850 mAh battery will get you through the day, but you may be wanting to do a precautionary top up of the smartphone if you’ve been working with it all day and are heading out on the town. With a sealed smartphone, there’s no opportunity to switch out the battery. The other area is Android itself. Sony’s smartphones tend to take their timehp envy 17-1181nr sata slot cd/dvd-rw drive burner to update their handsets to the latest version of Android, and the Xperia T is no exception. It currently ships with Android 4.0.4, with an update to Android 4.1 penciled in for ‘sometime after launch’. To be fair the exact version number of Android, while of paramount interest to developers hp envy 17-1003xx sata slot bd-re blu-ray drive burner playerand the geekerati, is not going to be the first thing that consumers are going to ask about. But there is a general awareness that Android is advancing, and anyone looking for the latest smartphone is going to be aware that the Xperia T is behind the curve. Looking beyond that issue, Sony’s tweaks to the regular Android UI do just enough to make the smartphone feel unique, while retaining a huge amount of familiarity for those who know Android hp envy 17-1003xx sata slot bd-rom blu-ray combo drivealready. The Xperia T places the three Android buttons at the bottom of the 4.55 inch capacitive screen. This allows them to change their look if required (such as when you move from portrait to landscape orientation – the graphic on the buttons will change orientation as well). It also means that Sony hp envy 17-1003xx sata slot cd dvd±rw drive burnercan reduce the size of the bezel and frame around the screen, giving more emphasis to the pixels and drawing your eye away from the physical size of the phone. That’s important, because smartphones are getting steadily bigger. The Xperia T’s screen is 4.6 inches on the diagonal, giving it 323 pixels per inch (which passes self-imposed threshold to be called a ‘retina’ display). At least it’s a full RGB matrix, and not a pentile display. That means you have some pretty stunning visual reproduction on the screen, and given the hp envy 14-1111nr sata slot cd dvd±rw drive burner720p resolution (1280×720 pixels) you’ve got a fabulous little machine for media playback, aided of course by having microSD support so you can pop all your HD movie files onto a 32GB SD hp envy 14-1001tx sata slot cd dvdrw/ram drive burnercard if you so wish. Make no bones about it, the Xperia T is a big phone. The stylists have had their work cut out to craft some deceptive curves into the Sony handset. They’ve done a nice job, curving the back of the handset into a concave experience that guides your hand to the centre of the device and a comfortable grip. Power and volume controls sit under the ring and pinkie finger, feeling a bit like an old fashioned chorded keyboard. Placing the heavier components at the top and bottom of the smartphone hp elitebook 8740w sata bd-re blu-ray drive burner playeralso helps the ergonomics while using the machine, and it is comfortable to hold for extended periods, assuming you are holding it in portrait orientation. Any length of time in landscape orientation can be tiring. The Xperia S is a Worthy Android Smartphone, But Sony Needs To Deliver More To Survive Ewan Spence Ewan Spence Contributor Should Nokia Have Chosen Android? Sony Might Have The Answer Ewan Spence Ewan Spence Contributor Unfortunately the sheer size of the Xperia T means that the design language Sony had used on their previous high-end Android device, the Xperia S (reviewed here on Forbes),hp elitebook 8740w sata bd-rom blu-ray combo drive has been lost. The potentially iconic clear plastic at the base of the unit, the convex back, and the packed feeling of that handset has been lost to a more masculine beast of a phone. The Xperia T is not a pretty phone. It’s very functional, but style plays a huge part in smartphone sales in today’s market, and I think Sony have made a mistake by going back to the ‘Arc’ styling with the Xperia T. Before they had something graceful, with power and style to back up the good lucks. Now they have a Ford F-140 truck. Those trucks are popular, but I don’t think Sony’s Android adventure is at the point where they can sell a brute of a phone. Even if they were, this is a brute with a number of weak points, and again I come back to that battery life. Practically this is not a phone you could trust to last from before sunrise to after sunset. It’s almost expected that you’ll top it up during the day, and after a few months of use that battery is going to be a bit short on capacity as it wears out. Don’t forget most people will need this phone to last for the duration of a two year contract. It’s great to see Sony have moved on from Xperia S and are continuing to explore the Android smartphone space. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the Xperia T, but a mix of small issues and a backwards step in terms of design leaves me wanting more. I think the best way to sum up the Xperia T is this. I know it could do everything I need it to do, I wouldn’t be disappointed if this was my main phone, but given the choice I would probably stay with the Xperia S while waiting to see what Sony come up with next year.