[Xperia SP General] Kunwar.g:
Went to Ambience mall to handle the SP. One unit was sold till 4pm and they have couple more instock for Rs 24999.00. There are no extras with it, only what comes with the box. MRP is Rs 27499.00. Has sticker mentioning " Reduced price is Rs 25999.00". Shop is selling it for Rs 24999.00.

Worked with the phone for around 20-30 min and here is my review. Hope its find to put the review here.

The moment you hold the SP, you feel that its solidly built. In fact personally like to feel the weight as it feels that you have something substantial in hand. The ZL is really light compared for the size. But keep in mind that any snap-on cover or full cover will increase the weight further. The difference on paper on weight is not much between the two but cause of the smaller size of the SP it feel substantial

Build Quality - The back panel is not smooth or glossy, which means it will not slip out from your hand. It has a slight rubbery feel to it. Very comfortable to hold and perfect size for use by 1 hand, without doubt. They had only the black model so could not confirm if the bezel on the white is actually white or not. The camera, flash and speaker cut-outs are perfect. There are not visible gaps (from approx 10-15cm view from the device) between the back panel and the aluminum body sides

Screen - On paper the difference seemed to be just 0.4 inch, but maybe I didn’t have a good understanding of inches. The difference is there between 4.6 vs 5. But the Z seems just a bit bigger and not at all uncomfortable to hold and work with one hand.

SP screen seemed to be a tad darker than the ZL at full brightness. The bottom bar where the control buttons are just a tad darker than on ZL ( had to keep them really side by side and pixel peep), but still on both its grey and not black.

ZL screen is brighter and much more vibrant than SP, which is obvious, but really once you see the ZL, the SP seems not that great. but if you just ignore the ZL you wouldn’t find anything missing or need for more. Please consider this that I still use the Ipad 1 and don’t feel the 'need' to upgrade for screen.

Speaker & Screen brightness/contrast test - Played same Video on both the ZL and SP ( this is the standard video that comes with SONY where its starts with sunrise/sunset and has flowers in the middle somewhere and then ends with the view of the mountains or maybe its the grand canyon). Played video at same time and kept one in each hand and stretched out my hands completely. Couldn’t decide which one was which, as the speaker from both were giving same output. Couldn’t differentiate much on clarity.

On most scenes it was similar on both, but right at the end of the video where the mountains come into picture the shadow areas were much much darker on the SP. Though that looked really contrasty, but preferred the ZL in case you like real life like image and not like the AMOLED displays. Re-winded and did check the same twice. Maybe this can be corrected by the calibration, but didnt have time to do that and test again

Camera - Well here is the real difference. The ZL has faster and accurate focus. Checked that by first focusing on the far away kept TV and then bringing back the camera to focus on my wrist watch and then on the pamphlets on the table near me. ZL was accurate always and took only 1-1.5 sec moving from far end TV to my watch. SP took couple of seconds and was not getting the focus right on the watch.

SP missed the focus 2 out of 4 times when taking pics of the Sony Z pamphlet which had pics of Katrina on it and also took time to focus. ZL was spot on every time.

The showroom was well light so the auto flash didn’t fire and there was quite a lot of noise on the SP. ZL didn’t have noise. The pamphlet was of white color but there was quite a lot of noise on the Kat's face when captured by the SP.

The processing of the picture taken was almost instant on the SP, so press button, and you can check the pic in gallery. On the ZL once the pic is taken it takes approx 1-2.5 seconds to show-up on gallery. Think that is cause of 8MP vs 13MP.

While testing the video recording the same focus issue with SP.

Software - Both were responsive at same speed. The capacitive buttons and screen were 100% responsive at all times. There was no lag at any time. One thing I noticed and was kind of strange. When you are on home screen and go the extreme right or left home screen and when there are no more screens on that side and you try to scroll further on the SP there is a wave of white light that kinda sprays from the extreme end of that side, the longer you pull the screen the longer is the stray of white light. This spray is not uniform in spread but uniform in brightness. This does not happen on the ZL. On the ZL it just does not scroll any further. Not sure if this si to be taken as a good or bad feature, But this does happen.

The UI on both the ZL and SP is same.

LED lights - In a well lighted room you will not notice the LED on SP unless you have a dark background behind the phone or the snap-on cover is non-transparent. Also you can distinctly make out the 3 LED as the spread is not much. Sony should have had a thinner transparent area, this would have resulted in better illumination and smaller body size. The LED does change its color basis the most prominent color on display while viewing picture. Not same while watching video which is good.

---------- Post added at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 PM ----------

Now surely will be ordering the ZL as getting it for Rs 31670.00 with warranty and snap-on cover...for the below specific reason

Screen

Camera focus speed

2 GB RAM - future proofing, dont want to change phone in next 2 years..