Detailed Review

Design:

Xperia Neo V is a good attempt from Sony and has a good design, camera and Bravia engine. The handset is an ideal fit for your hand and its dimensions are 116mm, 57mm and 13mm in height, width and depth. And it weights 126 gm in weight. The phone has 3.7 inches scratch-resistant LED-backlit LCD, capacitive touchscreen, with 16 million colours and 480 x 854 pixels resolution. It is available in Silver, blue and white colours. On the top, it has two ports, one for USB/Charging and a HDMI port with a 3.5 mm earjack placed between them. The right side has Power/Lock key on top side with volume/camera controls in the middle and below it is a dedicated camera key. The left side of Xperia Neo V is left bare. Over the screen is front facing camera with proximity sensors. Below the screen are physical home, back and menu key. On the back of the device there is a 5 megapixels camera, with LED flash light and a speaker on lower portion. Overall, the phone is handy with a different and attractive look, however, the screen size is small.

                                                            

Interface/OS:

The Sony Xperia Neo V primarily runs on Google Android 2.3 gingerbread operating system and is easily upgradeable to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. This phone is power backed by 1GHz Qualcomm MSM 8255 processor and 512 MB of RAM. When tested, the mobile functioned smoother and easier but, delayed in multitasking and swapping applications because of its slower 512 MB of RAM.

Camera:

The Neo V comes with a rich 5 megapixels main camera with LED flash light and it also has a VGA front facing camera for video calls. The camera has all smart features like, Geo-tagging, image stabilization, smile and face detection and touch focus. The camera gives you HD video recording with 720 pixels resolution. It has in-built photo light, 3D sweep panorama and auto focus functions enabled with 16X digital zoom. The image playback supported formats are BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WBMP and the image captured supported format is JPEG. When tested, the outdoor images were clear and rich with colours whereas, the indoor shots were clear with flash support but the colours were dull. The camera captures the picture fast and the overall camera performance is good.

Memory:

Sony Xperia Neo V has an in-built 320 MB user accessible memory with 512 MB RAM. It allows you to extend it up to 32 GB through micro SD extension slot.

Battery:

Xperia Neo V comes with a standard Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery which has done justice with this device. It delivers the stand by time of up to 400 hours on 2G and up to 360 hours on 3G. The music playback time of this phone is up to 25 hours and the Talk Time from the battery is up to 7 hours on 2G and up to 6 hours when on 3G. The overall battery performance when tested was great with average daily use but it discharges early with more browsing and 3G use.

Audio/Video/:

The in-built music player is simple to operate and is superb in sound quality with. This phone also has a FM radio with RDS player and it supports MP3, 3GPP, MP4, SMF, WAV, OTA and Ogg vorbis audio playback supported formats. This phone has Sony’s audio filter technology “xLOUD” which enhances the music loud and keep its clarity to the same level. but, the sound quality drops down while talking on speaker mode. Track ID music recognition is in-built in the device and 3GPP, MP4 and AMR are audio recording supported formats. The video quality of the phone, when tested, was good and it really delivered 1080 pixels HD video recording. The video playback and recording formats are 3GPP and MP4. When tested, the front facing camera for video calls performed average with its video quality. The receiver was able to see me clear when I was stable but not that clear with movements. However, the audio quality on a video call was brilliant.

Features:

Xperia neo V from Sony is in-built with all basic Android smart phone features and applications. And with upgradeable Android 4.0 version you can get or download latest android applications to your phone. In-built it has many social and other apps integrated like, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Sony entertainment Network and 3D gaming. The list of pre-loaded application include: Google Voice Search, Google Talk video chat, Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Gallery 3D and Google Maps with Street View. For connectivity and communication you have multiple options like USB High speed 2.0 and Micro USB support with Native USB tethering. As well as WiFi and WiFi Hotspot functionality with DLNA Certified you can connect/access to internet. Synchronization via Exchange ActiveSync, Google Sync and Facebook is possible. aGPS is in-built in the device and you have a WebKit web browser with Pan and zoom functions in it. Bluetooth technology helps you pair with other devices and share data with them.

                     

Conclusion:

The Sony Xperia Neo V is the best smart phone in Sony’s Xperia series till date. Powered with BRAVIA Engine this phone is much better than others in this price range. The 1 GHz processor, 5 megapixels camera with LED flash and Android 2.3 gingerbread which is upgradeable to Android 4.0 version easily are its main key features that give it edge over its competitors. But like other Sony phones this too has weak 512 MB RAM. Its screen size of 3.7 inch is ok with most of the users. So, we give this phone four star rating.

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