Sony Xperia U official photos
The Xperia S has all the spotlight to itself in the NXT series, but history has taught us that Sony (and previously Sony Ericsson) can do wonders in the compact class. In two generations of minis and the Xperia ray, the Japanese have delivered packages that no one in the same price range can beat.
We are not saying those smartphones were perfect - it's all about cutting the right corners in this class and Sony's engineers have proven time and time again that they are pretty good at that. The Xperia U is seemingly no exception, judging by a quick glance at the list of pros and cons.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
- 3.5" 16M-color capacitive touchscreen of Full WVGA resolution (854 x 480 pixels) with Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine
- Android OS v2.3.7 Gingerbread, planned Android 4.0 ICS update
- Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, 512 MB RAM, NovaThor U8500 chipset
- 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geotagging, Multi Angle shot
- 720p video recording @ 30fps with continuous autofocus and stereo sound
- Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
- GPS with A-GPS
- 8 GB built-in storage (6 GB user-accessible)
- microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- Voice dialing
- Adobe Flash 11 support
- Deep Facebook integration
- Accelerometer and proximity sensor
- Transparent stripe changes color depending on screen content
- Replaceable cap at the bottom allows easy customization
Main disadvantages
- Limited storage with no expansion options
- No Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of box
- Some competitors are slimmer
The Sony Xperia U specs sheet reads like a high-end device for the most part and the design of the smartphone easily manages to keep pace. Sure it's not the slim sweetness of the Xpera ray, but the Xperia U is still nicely compact and the transparent strip, which changes its color to match the screen contents, is a cool accent.
Sony Xperia U at ours
The obvious catch is the very limited internal storage - 4GB for your documents and media files and 2GB for apps is what you get out of the box and, if that's a deal breaker, you should probably start looking for other options as there's no way around it.
If you think this kind of storage (with some help from the cloud perhaps) will suffice, join us on the next page for the hardware inspection of what might turn out to be one of the hottest devices of the season.
Social phonebook
The visually customized phonebook of the Xperia U is virtually the same as the Xperia sola and can store extensive contact information. A tabbed interface allows you to access contact details, recent calls and info from social networking services.
The phonebook • The quick contacts can save you a click or two • the available options
The contact list can be sorted by either first or last name. There are two contact search options - a dedicated search field on top of the contact list, and an alphabet scroll to jump to names starting with a specific letter.
You can sync with multiple accounts, including Exchange and Facebook, and you can selectively show or hide contacts from some accounts (you can fine-sift specific groups from an account), or set the phonebook to display only contacts with phone numbers.
If a contact has accounts in multiple services, you can "join" their details to keep everything in one place. Their Facebook photos and interests (part of the Facebook integration) will show as extra tabs.
Viewing and editing a contact entry
Quick contacts are enabled - a tap on the contact's photo brings up shortcuts for calling, texting or emailing the contact.
Each contact can have a variety of fields (and repeat fields of the same type), the + and x buttons let you add and remove fields as needed. The fields cover anything from names (including a field to write the name down phonetically) to addresses, nicknames and notes.
There is an option to redirect calls directly to voicemail. Custom ringtones are enabled too.
You can "star" a contact, which puts it in the Favorites tab. Also, in each Gmail account there's a special group called "Starred in Android" where these contacts go automatically.
Smart telephony
Receiving and making calls on the Xperia U was trouble-free. The built-in secondary microphone is used for active noise-cancellation so calls are loud and clear even in noisy environments.
The Xperia U phone app features smart dialing. It searches for matches in both the contacts' phones and names. There's voice dialing too (the quickest way to activate it is the dedicated homescreen widget).
Smart dialing is available
Thanks to the proximity sensor, the Sony Xperia U automatically disables the touchscreen when you hold it up to your ear during a call.
The call log is integrated in the dialer - it shows a list of recently dialed, received and missed calls in the top half of the screen and the keypad on the bottom half. Once you start typing, the call log is replaced by the smart dial list.
There's a Favorite tab that displays starred contacts, but you can add other contacts to the list too. The tab displays a grid of contact photos with their first name underneath.
We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on the Sony Xperia U. Scoring a an Average result, the Xperia U performed better than its bigger brother, the Xperia sola. More info on our loudspeaker test can be found here.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overal score | |
| Sony Xperia U | 65.7 | 65.1 | 72.7 | Average |
| 65.5 | 64.2 | 67.0 | ||
| Apple iPhone 4S | 65.8 | 64.5 | 74.6 | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note N7000 | 64.9 | 64.6 | 72.2 | |
| Sony Xperia S | 72.7 | 61.8 | 69.6 | |
| HTC One S | 65.1 | 64.6 | 76.7 | |
| HTC Sensation XE | 65.8 | 65.4 | 76.9 | |
| Motorola RAZR XT910 | 74.7 | 66.6 | 82.1 | Very Good |
| 76.6 | 75.7 | 84.6 | Excellent |
Messaging
Text messages and MMS use standard threaded layout. Each thread is displayed as an IM chat session, the latest message at the bottom. You can manage individual messages (forward, copy, delete) and even lock them against deletion.
Search is enabled to locate a specific message in all conversations and you can also activate delivery reports.
The messaging app • Starring a message • All starred messages • Adding multimedia to the message
Individual messages can be starred and you can find all of them in the Starred folder available in the context menu. This is a nice way to mark important messages that you'll need to find quickly later on.
Adding multimedia (photos, videos, sounds, etc.) will convert the message to an MMS.
Moving on to email, the Gmail app supports batch operations, which allow multiple emails to be archived, labeled or deleted. The app supports multiple Gmail accounts, but there's no unified inbox for other email services.
Gmail app supports batch operations and multiple (Gmail) accounts
However, the generic email app can do that as well. It can handle multiple POP or IMAP accounts and you have access to the messages in the original folders that are created online.
A preview pane splits the screen in half - one side lists the emails, while the other shows the currently selected email.
This works both in portrait and landscape and you can easily drag the separator between the two areas to make one bigger.
Google Talk handles Instant Messaging. The GTalk network is compatible with a variety of popular clients like Pidgin, Kopete, iChat and Ovi Contacts.
As for text input, the Xperia U offers a customized on-screen full QWERTY keyboard. Typing on the portrait keyboard isn't very comfortable - keys are tall and thin, making for a lot of typos. They're just not as well spaced as on the bigger Xperia S display.
Xperia U keyboard is comfortable in either layout
Flipping the phone to landscape gives you bigger, easier to press buttons.
In terms of customizations, the Xperia U keyboard features the so-called Gesture input. It works the same as Swype. Even if you've never used Swype input before, you'll quickly get used to it.
Standard gallery with a funky twist
The Xperia U uses the traditional droid Gallery, which hasn't really seen much change in Gingerbread. It has good functionality, cool 3D looks and nice transition effects, and this time shows full resolution images.
The different albums and folders appear as piles of photos, which fall in neat grids once selected. If you have online albums over at Picasa those show up as separate stacks as well.
The Xperia U puts the transparent glowing strip to good use in the Gallery app. The strip glows in the dominant color of the photo you're currently viewing. It will glow red for a sunset, green for grass and blue for sky.
You should have noticed the two switches at the top by now. The first opens a different gallery section that stores your 3D panorama shots, while the second opens the Sweep Multi Angle shots section.
The standard gallery • The 3D and Multi Angle views
To view the 3D panoramas in 3D, you need to connect your phone to a compatible 3DTV. Multi Angle shots are harder to view outside the device as you need something with an accelerometer and the proper app - you best bet is another Xperia.
Facebook and Picasa albums are distinguished by the small logo of the corresponding service. Facebook pictures can be "liked" with the thumbs up button in the upper right corner.
Liking photos is enabled for Facebook albums
Photos can be sorted by date with the help of a button in the top right corner, which switches between grid and timeline view.
You can use pinch zoom or the old-fashioned +/- buttons. If you pan past the edge of a photo, the gallery will load up the next (or previous) image.
Images can be cropped or rotated directly in the gallery. Quick sharing via Picasa, Email apps, Facebook, Bluetooth or MMS is also enabled.
The BRAVIA engine enhances contrast and colors by sharpening the image and reducing noise. These steps would normally lead to artifacts, but you'll have to look from really up close to notice. You can switch BRAVIA off, but we recommend keeping it on - it really improves the image quality.
Video player
There is no dedicated video player app on the Xperia U as in most of the droids out there. DivX and XviD videos are supported but the Xperia not all videos got through.
Unlike the Xperia S, the U didn't play any of the 1080p videos we threw at it, but 720p videos worked fine.
Watching a video on the Xperia U
You can download a video player off the Google Play Store, but that won't solve the 1080p video problem, there just doesn't seem to be enough processing power. Some of the free players out there however will address other deficiencies of the Xperia U video player though, like the lack of subtitles.
Fashionable music player
The Xperia U shares the same music player as the Xperia S. You're welcomed to a Cover Flow-like interface and you can swipe left and right to skip tracks (complete with a smooth 3D effect).
This happens on the Playing tab; the second one available called My Music and is where your library gets organized. Tracks are sorted by album, artist, playlist, all tracks, SensMe channel, and favorites. There's also a link to Sony's Music Unlimited service.
The transparent strip does its trick here as well. It glows in color that matches the album art of the song. Unfortunately though, there isn't an option to make it pulse to the rhythm of the track.
In the Now playing interface, there's the familiar Infinite button - it gives you quick options to find the music or karaoke videos on YouTube for the current song, look for more tracks on PlayNow, search Wikipedia for info on the artist or look for lyrics on Google. New features can be added to this menu with extensions available in the Play Store.
The revamped music player • Music library • The Infinite button
SensMe isn't new and should be familiar to Sony Ericsson Walkman owners. In case you've missed it, SensMe filters songs by mood. You can filter music through nine "channels" - daytime, energetic, relax, upbeat, mellow, lounge, emotional, dance and extreme.
You need to download SensMe data before you can use this feature. Luckily, you no longer have to use a PC Suite to tag songs - you just need an Internet connection, the phone will handle the rest.
Audiophiles will appreciate the rich selection of equalizer presets. There's a custom preset too - it lets you adjust five frequency bands and there's a Clear Bass slider too.
The More tab offers a Headphone surround option, which can be set to Studio, Club or Concert hall. If you're not using the headphones, you can turn the xLOUD feature on, which optimizes the sound for the Xperia S loudspeaker.
The equalizer
Sony has neatly added track info and playback controls on the lockscreen once music starts playing. The music controls replace the clock, which might be annoying if you just want to check the time. Still, the clock slides out of view, so you have about a second to see what time it is (or just look at the small clock in the upper right corner).
Music player controls on the lockscreen and notification area
FM radio with RDS, there is TrackID too
The Sony Xperia U is equipped with an FM radio, which has a really neat and simple interface. It automatically scans the area for the available stations and places "notches" on the frequency dial for easier scrolling to the next station. There's a Force mono option to use in case of poor reception.
The FM radio app • TrackID • Licking a radio track on facebook
The TrackID service is also available and works within the radio app. You can even like a song on Facebook.
Pleasing audio output
The Sony Xperia U did quite well in the first part of our audio output quality test. When connected to an active external amplifier, the smartphone got excellent scores all over the field and had above average loudness, which adds up to a great performance.
There's some degradation when headphones come into play, most notably in terms of distortion. The stereo crosstalk rises a bit too, but it's nothing to worry about. The rest of the reading remain great though, which means that you are getting pretty good overall performance.
Sharp camera with some 3D magic
The Xperia U boasts a 5 megapixel camera accompanied by a single LED flash. It's capable of producing stills of 2592 х 1944 resolution. We suppose it shares one and the same image sensor with the Xperia sola, as the produced photos are very similar.
The camera controls on the Xperia U are available on two taskbars on either side of the viewfinder. On the left you get four shortcuts to various settings, while the still camera/camcorder toggle, the virtual shutter and a thumbnail of the last photo taken are on the right.
The menu key brings up two pages of extra settings - scenes, resolution, smile detection, geotagging, image stabilization and focus mode among others. You can customize three of the shortcuts on the left (the shooting mode shortcut is fixed).
The Xperia U camera interface
There're five capture modes to choose from: Normal, Scene recognition, Sweep Panorama, Sweep Multi Angle and 3D Sweep Panorama. In Normal, you pick the Scene settings manually or you can enable Scene recognition and let the Xperia S take a guess (it's fairly good at it).
The 3D Sweep Panorama is business as usual - you press the shutter key and pan the phone across the scene. The resulting panoramic photo can be viewed in both 2D and 3D (on a compatible TV).
The Sweep Multi Angle is a different mode and it's one of the coolest camera features we've seen in a while. You take a sweep panoramic photo in the same fashion as the regular 3D Panorama above, but the result is very different. It produces something like a lenticular card.
Tilting the phone lets you look the image from different sides, if it's a still object. A shot of a moving object, however, turns into a sort of an animated GIF or creates interesting distortions, which can be pretty funny too. There are some distortions visible even in a static scene, but it's ok.
Photos taken in Sweep Multi Angle mode are handled by a separate app called 3D album, and they are not listed in the regular gallery. But just to make it clear again - the Xperia U doesn't have a 3D screen. It cleverly relies on its sensors to detect the handset movement and it changes the on-screen image accordingly.
The Xperia U features a Quick launch option, which lets you customize the phone's behavior upon a press of the camera key when the phone is locked. The default option is Launch and capture - it unlocks the phone, starts the camera and instantly snaps a photo - a rather uncomfortable option because it's nearly impossible to correctly frame a picture before the screen is on. This resulted in a couple of images with motion blur written all over them.
The stiff camera shutter key is back. It's very comfortable up until you half-press to focus, then it gets harder to take all the way down without shaking the device. It's not as bad as the one on the Xperia sola but it's still quite uncomfortable.
The camera produces decent, if unspectacular images with an average amount of detail. Noise levels are a little high, but colors rendering is quite close to reality.
Sony Xperia U camera samples
The Xperia U manages good macro images as well. It can go as close as 3-4 cm and allows you to really capture a lot of detail.
Sony Xperia U macro sample
Image quality comparison
The Xperia U joins a long list of tested devices in our photo comparison tool. We've selected the Xperia sola and the HTC One V as its main contenders but feel free to change them as you see fit.
Sony Xperia U in our Photo Compare Tool
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