Sony Xperia E1 falls in the music product line of Sony. As per Sony this one is the best world’s best Smartphone in its class. Means in the music category. Today we will find out how good it is. Sony Xperia E1 Dual is a compact phone which carries many enhanced audio features. Like if you check the official site you can see this device is powered by Xloud, Clear Audio, Clear Phase and technology. The speaker produces maximum 100db loud audio. Sony Xperia E1 is designed for those who need a quality music phone. It is also a budget device. This phone comes for Rs.8250 on Flipkart and Snapdeal is selling the same for Rs.7,433. This means it falls under the budget price of Rs.10000. After checking out the entire feature it will be quiet easy to find out whether this device is worth buying our not.
After checking out the phone I found that it is a nice compact music phone that also carries android features. But it does not gives you anything in photography. It has a basic 3MP camera only. It runs on Android v4.3 (Jelly Bean) OS and powered by 1.2 GHz Qualcomm MSM8210 Dual Core Processor. The ram is just 512MB. Overall performance is not easy to stay at the start. We have to test it in more detail. But one thing I can say that Sony is right about the audio output. It is surely the best phone. One thing I also want to add. Sony is giving out some goodies with the device. Like a headphone. Check the offer before buying. Now before reviwing the product, let’s have a quick look at its specifications list:
- Android 4.3 JellyBean Operating System
- 4-inch TFT capacitive touch screen display
- 800 x 480 pixels resolution
- Dual SIM
- 1.2 GHz dual-core Snapdragon 200 (MSM8210) processor
- 512MB of RAM
- Adreno 302 GPU
- 3 Megapixel rear camera, no front facing camera.
- 4 GB internal memory, expandable upto 32GB using microSD Card
- 3G, Bluetooth, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, GPS / aGPS
- 1700 mAh battery
Design:
Xperia E1 dual features a 4-inch TFT Capacitive Touchscreen. IT is not very small nor very large but a prefect size enough to navigate to different apps, read chat message and even play games. The body is not very strong here. The phone follow the regular Sony design where you have the round shape power button on the side. The phone comes in three colors. They are black, white and purple. The white color looks more impressive compare to black and purple. The phone has minimalistic features when it comes to the design. It looks like an entry level phone. This means the body is made of plastic which also makes it very light. Obviously the cost is low so Sony will not provide a durable body. I am not really impress with the body here. I had used Sony phone before, one of them was Sony Xperia E which was predecessor of E1. It was having quiet nice body compared to E1 Dual.
Plastic body does not means it will be slippy. The grip is good and you can hold the phone nicely. Another flaw of design is thickness. But that is common in many budget phone. The overall weight is 118g which is quiet light and you do not feel weight on your pocket. 4″ WVGA looks cool. It offers you a 233 PPI pixel density. Which is nice for a budget phone. Volume rocker is placed on the side with power and there is a micro usb slot on the left side. A 3MP camera is on the backside with no flash and auto focus support. But at the back side there is one more thing. The speaker. Sony Xperia E1 Dual has as 100db speaker that produce really loud sound. It runs on 1700 mAH battery.
Screen :
Sony Xperia E1 Dual does not has a very great screen quality. But it is decent. 233 ppi pixel density will give you nice look when you are reading something. It is not fair to expect much here. But the visibility is affected when you are in sunlight. In indoor the phone is just great. You can check your pic and enjoy hd videos also on the same. I had used it for web browsing. I am able to see the text clearly but I have to zoom them because 4inch screen is produce tiny text when you are on the full screen mode. The color output is also fine. There must be something for sunlight reading. That means when you are out, the phone screen gets really dark. The display offers you a maximum 800 x 480 pixels of screen resolution. It is decent but not great.
Camera:
There is not much to talk about camera. 3MP is low. You have some nice photos when you are outside. Because there is no flash and you cannot get good images in dark environment. There are some good phones in the market which falls in the same price range but gives you more bigger camera. At least Sony should have kept this to 5MP with autofocus and flash. It is one of the major negative point that this device has as 3MP fixed camera only. If you are looking for composite multimedia and photography features then this device is not the right choice. As per the specification you can take 720p video through the camera. It does but the videos are dark.
Internals and Performance:
Sony Xperia E1 Dual has a SM8210 chipset. It has a mid range cpu and gpu support. It comes with 1.2 GHz Dual Core Snapdragon processor, 512MB ram and Adreno 302 gpu. This is a mid range specification. If the ram is atleast 1GB then you get better output. Sometime when you load different application the phone freezes a lot. I had seen this problem in many budget phone of Sony. A major amount of memory is consumed by Sony UI. It must have at least 1GB of ram which can make the phone work more better. I had tried installing a few games also but that also does not work fine. Game like Angry bird work well only if you are not having too many applications working in the background. The phone will not lag or freeze if you are using it for chatting, web surfing and for multimedia usage. But if have different apps like Google Drive, or some kind of updater the phone will work slow.
There are changes that we get Android 4.4 KitKat on this. But officially there is no update announced. Sony Xperia E1 Dual already has Google Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), one tiny update can boost the device performance. It comes with 4GB internal storage among which you only get 50% of the space. So this is a disappointment here. You have to use a memory card. So far the device works fine but it lag occasionally when there are too m any processes. It has dual sim features and different connectivity options.
Apps and Features:
Sony uses optimized version of Android 4.3 Jellybean OS with their own proprietary UI. This custom UI is heavy according to me. Compare to Samsung, Sony UI is a pain when you are using a phone which has 512mb of lower ram. Sony Xperia E2 Dual also has a mid range cpu which is not ideally designed for gaming or for heavy multi-tasking. Adding a app killer will give you a bit boost in the output. UI brings many additional features. You can add different widgets or change themes through that. I think Sony should develop two different UI one for high end phone like Xperia Z1 and the other for low end and mid range devices with less features. There is no need to have those theming stuff or additional Timescape widgets. What is the user of having those if you cannot use them. But if you still want to change the appearance you can customize it as per your need. Sony phones are always good when it comes to personalization.
There are few default apps comes commonly in all mobile phone. By default there is a Gallery, Video and the famous Walkman application in the device. You can add more from Sony store if you want. The best part of this device is that it gives you very advance audio technology. If you can check online there is no mobile in the market that really comes with 100db speaker. This speaker is capable of giving you a very loud and clear sound quality. You can enjoy music with your phone. It gives you Clear Audio technology which reduce distortion when you are listening to music. It also has Clear Bass and xLoud the enhance the headphone audio and gives you theater kind of effect. Sony Xperia E1 Dual falls in the list of best music phone due to these features. But remember that if you are playing songs on speaker at full volume the phone battery will end really fast.
Battery life:
1700mAH battery is relatively low when it comes to music phone. You will have to charge your phone a number of time in a day if you are using it for music and web surfing. I am not really happy with the battery life here. Even after charging it for full day it will drain really fast. After low ram, poor battery is the second biggest negative point of this device. If you are travelling you have to carry a portable power bank with you. For day to day task you can expect around 6 hrs of battery power if you are not opening web pages. But if you are using the speaker and on the same hand you are also playing game the battery life is less than 4hrs.
Conclusion:
After using it is right to say that Sony Xperia E1 Dual fall in the entry level category. Sony tried to stuff too many things, but they fail to optimize the performance and battery power. This are two things which are needed for every device. There are few software issue which can fix if Sony releases a new update. There are few bugs in the phone. Like auto restart or freezing. I had also faced this. It appear when you have too many applications working in the background. I am not completely satisfied with Sony Xperia E1 Dual. I had already tested various entry level phone by LAVA and Micromax and compared to them Sony Xperia E1 Dual fell short.
