Electronics giant Sony decides to make its presence felt in the smartphone race with the Xperia Ion. The Ion is currently on the top spot of the Xperia smart phone family. Truthfully, this touchscreen phone’s design is not very remarkable but it still is one to reckon with in the series. Taking a glimpse at the phone makes one think of Sony’s love for straight lines and edges. However, the feel of the phone in your hand is quite the opposite from its angular appearance with its ergonomic back and very nice aluminum finish for that extra sleek feel.
Hardware
This phone’s dual core processing unit runs at 1.5 Ghz and has a working memory or RAM of 1GB. Its graphics relies on Adreno 220 GPU coupled with an internal memory of about 13GB that may actually be used. If you somehow run out of space, you can insert additional external memory using a microSD card of up to 32 GB. The LCD capacitive touch screen has HD Reality technology and is LED lit. The display can support resolutions of up to 720×1280 pixels and delivers very crisp imagery thanks to its Sony Mobile Bravia Engine and is a whopping 4.55 inches. Image-and video capture is done by its 12 MP rear camera with Exmor R Sensor.
Software
The Ion runs on Android Operating System version 2.3 also known as Gingerbread. However, to keep up with current Android devices that already run on higher versions of the OS, there are rumored plans for this phone to be upgraded to version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The Android software has been tweaked by Sony through the clean and very elegant Timescape UI. This user interface rivals that of leading smart phone manufacturers. One of the many included perks in this UI is an app known as LiveWare Manager that pops up every time you connect hardware to the Ion like an earphone for example. What the app does is that it lets you customize what your Ion does every time you connect hardware.
Pros and Cons
The HD Reality Display is really very crisp. So, watching movies and playing games on this phone is really not disappointing. The 12 MP rear camera will also attract a good chunk of mobile photographers out there. And the microSD slot is a very big plus for those who like a certain level of storage space freedom. However, the dual-core processor and the dated Gingerbread OS installed in this device might become a drawback when it comes to performance and experience, that is, when compared to other devices out there.
The Verdict
In a world currently dominated by smartphones with the latest Android software, the Ion, being shipped out with Android Gingerbread OS, might not attract consumers. The “planned” update to Ice Cream Sandwich is not a very good reassurance for most of us knowing that some updates take weeks and even months to roll out. By that time, newer operating systems might be already available and bugs must still be fixed to make it work optimally. Being touted as Sony Ericsson’s flagship phone, the Xperia Ion, in some aspects, did not get the best technology available and will undoubtedly be upstaged by other more powerful phones in the market. Presently, this phone is just too slow to beat other more popular phones and the dual-core processor will unfortunately not suffice with other top performers such as IPhone and Galaxy S III. More improvements are definitely needed to make this a competitive star material.
