Sony Xperia E3 Dual

Sony has launched its first budget smartphone recently to overhaul the rest. It is a good try by Sony to join the competition and make a way. Let's see whether they are successful in their try- Design and Build-The phone is very compact and easy to handle. It feels really good in hand and the plastic body at the back with "Sony" emboldened is eye catching. It has very narrow bezels. The power button is placed on the top right corner. It weighs 143 grams but still it is not much heavy. Overall, the looks are pretty decent. Display- It sports a 4.5 inch IPS display with 480 x 854 pixels giving it a pixel density of 218 ppi. It is protected with Shatter proof glass instead of the most famous Gorilla Gorilla Glass. I did like the display to some extent, however, colours spread while rotating the screen. Viewing angles are not good. The browsing experience is not very nice. However, at such a price it is okay. So, the display is fine, somehow. Performance and RAM- It boasts a Snapdragon 400 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 Quad-core processor clubbed with 1GB RAM. This is pretty good and similar specs can be found on the new Moto G. So, as expected the performance was very smooth and lags were seldom seen. Most of the apps and games run well and the time to open is good (not as good as on Stock Android). It has Adreno 305 GPU, but, it did stagger while playing heavy games. After playing Royal Revolt 2 for 40-50 minutes, the phone became a bit slow and the back heated. So, for HD gamers, it's not a plus point as the HD and heavy games lag. However, for daily tasks and apps, it handles them well. Multitasking on this device is good. You can open 10 apps simultaneously without facing any lag. Software-It runs on Android 4.4.2. It is not pure android or stock android so you can find bloatware in it. Sony icons are very small and I hate this part. So, I use a launcher. However, it depends on a person's liking. The interface of Google phones is better than this. But, many apps like the Sony Walkman are very good. The sound quality is enhanced by Sony and fills up the room. So, I would not say anything bad as the choice of interface purely depends on the user. Still, The pure android interface is faster and apps take lesser time to open. Camera-It has got a 5MP primary camera, LED Flash and a VGA secondary camera. The 5MP camera captures beautiful pictures. The videos recorded are good and the photos look bright and clear. However, pictures are not very crisp as compared to low budget Lumia devices. Storage-It comes with inbuilt 4B storage which is expandable upto 32GB using microSD cards. So, never worry about the residence of videos, photos, apps, games etc. Battery-It comes with a Non-removable Li-Ion 2330 mAh battery which would surely last a day at least after web browsing, gaming, video playing, etc. So, this is a plus point for people who hate charging their phones frequently. Price- It is priced in accordance with the lower segment. You can buy it at a meagre 11k. Verdict Overall, I would say that it's a good try by Sony. They usually launch high end phones but this is a low budget one. It has nice features and build quality is good. The performance is okay and the battery life is brilliant. However, Sony has to do something unique to win the race. These things can be found on the new Moto G, even its much better than Sony in every segment (except for battery life). Spending a bit more can get you many magnificent devices. But, if you are a true Sony fan and can but any product by Sony blindly just by its brand name or something, then I guess you can buy it. According to my experience, Sony phones are not that good. They wont last long and may upset you after some time in terms of performance. Hence, it is all the brand name that matters, nothing else (in comparison to other similar spec phones). So, I would give it a rating of 3.8 stars.(read more)