SONY XPERIA L REVIEW

The Xperia Z is the jewel in the
Sony smartphone crown at the
moment, but there are some
interesting things happening
further down the scale, like the
Xperia L, which combines style
and capability for around half
the price.
It's on sale now for around £229.
As you can guess from the price,
the Xperia L lacks the HD screen,
quad-core processor, 4G
connectivity and waterproofing
of the Xperia Z , but it does have
a few items in its favour.
Design
It's a good-looking handset, with
Sony's dynamic curve design that
gives it a distinctive arcing
shape. It's not especially slim at
10mm but that curve makes it
seem thinner than it is. Top and
bottom have an unusual looking
slant to them too, which shows
off the metallic strip that runs all
the way around the handset. At
the bottom there's also a rather
attractive LED effect that pulses
when you receive alerts.
Sony Xperia L Sony
On paper, the 4.3-inch
touchscreen sounds like a step
too far down towards budget
level, with a resolution of
854x480 pixels -- well below the
Xperia Z's full HD 1,920x1,080. At
228ppi it has roughly half the
pixel density of the Xperia Z, and
even behind some midprice
rivals like the Google Nexus 4
(320ppi). But while it's perhaps
lacking a bit in detail, it still
manages to deliver rich and
vibrant colours with good
contrast that show off movies to
good effect.
Android, software and
processor
It's running Android 4.1.2 Jelly
Bean which is a perfectly fine
operating system, but one that's
now starting to look a bit old,
especially with version 4.3
already starting to appear. Still,
the age isn't immediately obvious
since Sony has updated its user
interface and you can now
arrange the icons on the various
screens in different ways --
alphabetical, most used or your
own custom arrangement.
The dual-core processor is backed
by 1GB RAM which is pretty
much the least we'd expect on a
phone of this price these days. It
does a decent if unspectacular job
of keeping all its various
processing balls in the air,
though it did start to lag just a
little with a handful of apps
running at the same time. In our
AnTuTu benchmark test it
managed 10,918 -- not bad, but
noticeably behind Samsung's
recent S4 dual-core devices like
the S4 Mini and S4 Zoom.
Sony Xperia L test photo Dave Oliver
Photography
The 8-megapixel camera includes
an LED flash, autofocus and
Sony's Exmor RS sensor for
better capability in low light. It
starts up very quickly and you
can get it going even quicker
with the Quick Launch mode,
which takes a snap or starts the
video running as soon as you
switch on. Other features to play
with include HDR, panorama
mode, image stabilisation and
calibrated smile detection (you
can set it to detect different levels
of smile). Picture quality is pretty
good overall, with nice sharp
edges and accurate colour
balance.
There's 8GB of memory on board,
though you can bump that up by
a further 32GB via microSD card
-- not for apps though, just pics,
vids and music. The battery held
up reasonably well too, giving us
around a day and a half of
steady use.
Conclusion
The Sony Xperia L is far from the
cutting edge of smartphone
development, but it's a good
looking, solidly built low to
midrange device with a decent
screen and a pretty good camera.
The processor is a little lacking,
and it's a shame it's not running
the latest version of Android but
it's a solidly capable handset for
the money.