[Sony Xperia XA2 Guides, News, & Discussion] NightOrchid:
So Ive had my XA2 for 4 days now.. and Ive got to say.. for a £200 phone (I paid), its pretty darn good...

I love the XZ3 style curved edged screen and the slightly curved back, and... even though the back plate is plastic.. it has a nice weighty feeling in the hand, it doesn't feel like a sub-£300 device..

The LCD screen is nice a clear and while, even at brightness 100%, its not fantastic in direct sunlight... its still pretty good... one of the best sub £500 screens for viewing outdoors Ive seen..

The speaker is surprisingly good and gets very VERY loud, so ringer and Msg tones are not a problem to hear at all, even in crowded places, although the speaker gets so loud that music can be tinney it doesn't distort, even past 90% volume... Its great.. the ear piece on recieving Calls is fantastically crisp, loud and clear

I don't play games on a 5.2" phone, so I cant comment on benchmarks, but so far.. Ive had no slow downs or stutters from the SD 630, its all liquid smooth and a breeze to use...

Also, the battery life is fantastic.. it really is... I am a moderate user and Ive only charged it once in 4 days and im still on 30%.. yep its really good... especially if you use Data saver in Google, turn your Location settings to "Battery Saving".. its Really good... and I haven't had any heat issues either... cool all the way, even using a QC3.0 fast charger.

One thing I have noticed.. Iam using a SanDisk 128GB 90M/S SDCard… but have found that its slow to access music using the SONY Music Player (album art is slow to load and songs can sometimes take a second or so to play.. .. yet on Google Music.. its nice and fast, but the XZ2 has the same issue so I don't think its the SD630 SoC ... strange that one..

Now, the camera... I purchased my XA2 and updated to build..123 (Dec 18), so I cant speak for previous issues, but I gotta say... the XA2 camera:

The Good..

Excellent in Daylight shots, great colour balance and lighting, Very clear and crisp, not bad on slow moving subjects, plenty of detail, hardly any barrel distortion or edge softening, no over-sharpening. great "Auto" Mode, great EIS..

The Bad

Poor in low light, but even when using the flash in low light.. it takes about 2 - 3 secs to actually take the image, so camera shake happens sometimes .... even when taking daylight shots, the camera can be slow to focus, over-exposes {like 90% of all phone cameras do} and I don't do selfies so I don't care about this but it has a terrible Selfie camera..

But hand on heart, this XA2 has a better camera than the old XZ Premium and XZ1.. Take all my "Good Points" and convert them to "Bad Points", plus the "Bad Points" ive already said... and you've got the XZP camera... Aside from the 4K 5.5" screen and Stereo speakers... IMHO, the XA2 is a better device than the XZP and XZ1. Ive owned 4 XZPs and an XZ1.. and ALL of them have had Terrible cameras, terrible Barrel distortion from the Z5 days, woolly, fuzzy edge softening as much as 15% on each image... Over-sharpening, terrible blurry images through rubbish EIS .. Believe me, Im still scratching my head at this XA2 compared to my XZP and XZ1 nightmares.

So, IMO its a no-brainer.. better than the P20 Lite and the Nokia 7 Plus... if you can put up with the "Sometimes" slow to focus times on the camera, not a selfie person or poor hand held low light images.. then Buy It.. this is easily the best phone under the OnePlus 5 for images and ease of use... its a joy to use, just remember it is only a 5.2" display