Sony Xperia 10 II
Price: £319 from fave.co/3fElEVq
Sony’s smartphone release schedule has slowed to an absolute crawl in recent years, but that makes those times when a phone does hit the market all the more exciting. Queue the Sony Xperia 10 II – a phone with some unique flavour in an overcrowded mid‑range market.
Last year’s Xperia 10 and 10 Plus were middling mid‑rangers, namely because of the ageing chipsets at their hearts, but also due to the fact that, beyond their elongated displays, they didn’t do enough to differentiate themselves in a fiercely aggressive segment of the phone space.
The Xperia 10 II (that’s pronounced “ten, mark two”, for clarification – messy, but we’ll move on) looks as though it’s addressed many of its predecessors’ shortcomings.
By being a singular device rather than 2019’s twosome, the hope is that Sony has poured more energy into making this a more competitive phone outright. It’s also granted the 10 II standout features
that you seldom see at this price or in the mid‑range market in general, not to mention it’s a bit of a looker.
DESIGN
If you like the flat glass faces, tight corners and general precision look and feel of last year’s Xperia 1 (or, indeed, this year’s Xperia 1 II), you’ll appreciate the aesthetic at work on the 10 II too.
The 6in display, paired with the company’s current taste for a 21:9 aspect ratio, makes a phone with a decidedly‑ big screen feel deceptively small. In a sense, it is small, or more specifically narrow, with a 69mm width and a respectable 8.2mm thickness that means most people will have no trouble comfortably gripping the 10 II in one hand. It’s also wonderfully light, considering its size, at 151g.
While the frame running the phone’s edge is plastic, it’s expertly finished to remain consistent with the look of the rest of the phone, while also offering a nice hand feel. A subtle indent on the right side of the frame houses a signature Xperia power key-cum-fingerprint scanner – no awkward side‑by‑side placement here – which is as responsive
and reliable as you could hope for.
The frame also houses a USB‑C port, volume rocker, SIM tray and (perhaps most importantly) a 3.5mm headphone jack. Sony even went as far as including a pair of conventional wired in‑ear buds in‑box, just to hammer the port’s inclusion home.
It’s also worth noting that, unlike practically every other phone on the market, the SIM tray on the Xperia 10 II’s left side doesn’t require any additional tools to be opened or closed; made all the more impressive by the fact that this phone also boasts IP65/68 certification.
This means it can withstand being fully submerged in water for short periods of time, which is, it’s worth noting, a trait of real scarcity in the mid‑range market.
DISPLAY
Another inclusion that isn’t really a guarantee in the mid‑range market is the use of an OLED display and Sony comes through again with the panel at play on the Xperia 10 II. It’s a 6in, 21:9 Full HD+ OLED Sony‑brand ‘Triluminous for mobile’ panel that delivers on colours, contrast and viewing angles.
With entrants like the Realme 6 now out in the wild, there was some hope of a high refresh rate in‑tow, but Sony is notoriously slow to jump on such trends, meaning here it still ticks over at 60Hz. Its mid‑range standing means no HDR viewing either (even though the newly‑ announced, affordable Moto G 5G Plus offers HDR10 support) and maximum brightness could be better. Sony does at least include some handy customization options as part of the viewing experience that run a little deeper than most devices around this price point.
You can choose between more accurate or more vivacious visuals, thanks to the ‘Original’ and ‘Standard’ viewing options, while a built‑in video optimisation engine is just a tap away.