Flawed, but still great value for money
WHEN I opened the box to reveal the Sony Xperia XA1 Ultra review unit, an old cartoon sprang to mind. A man with a massively muscled upper body, but pencil-thin legs, is standing in his doorway receiving a parcel. “Looks like the other half of your bodybuilding course has arrived,” quips the mail man.
Sony’s new mid-range phablet reminds me of that guy. Its designers appear to have got the memo about razor-thin bezels being the new big smartphone trend, and they’ve done an impressive job in virtually eliminating them from the sides of the phone. Unfortunately, this only serves to emphasise just how big they still are on the top and bottom.
It makes for an imposingly tall handset and, thanks to the wellmachined, slim aluminium body, one that feels solid, but not overly hefty in the hand. The lack of side bezels definitely makes it less of a handful than the previous generation of phablets, but unless you have particularly long digits, one-handed use remains a non-starter.
But, let’s face it, if you’re buying a device with the word “ultra” in the title, you should probably expect that. On the plus side, the full HD, six-inch display is gorgeous and bright, on par with those gracing some flagship smartphones. And when you turn this big boy on its side to watch videos or play games in landscape mode, those giant top and bottom bezels do make for useful handles to grip the device without obscuring the screen.
So far, so impressive for a device with a price tag of around R5 500. But as you’d expect, Sony has had to make some compromises to hit this price point.
One of them is the distinctly midrange Mediatek Helio P20 chipset. That said, the phone was generally snappy and responsive in day-to-day use, barring the odd stutter when playing some processor-intensive games.
It comes with the latest commercially available version of the Android operating system, 7.0 Nougat. Thankfully, Sony has taken a soft touch when it comes to adding its own apps, keeping bloatware to a minimum, and those it has included, like the Album and Music apps, are pretty good.
The XA1 Ultra comes with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in storage that can be expanded using an aftermarket microsd card.
It’s a little disappointing that such a big phone comes with a relatively puny 2700mah battery. I’m sure the designers could have easily squeezed at least a 3500mah fuel cell into all that real estate afforded by the ample brow and chin. Still, it almost always lasted me a full day unless I was flogging it particularly hard. But a beefier battery would have put it into the two-day league with champions of stamina like the Huawei Mate 9, and I can’t help thinking this was a lost opportunity for Sony.
The 23MP main camera and 16MP front-facing camera captured mostly good pictures, but they’re not in the league of premium devices like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and iphone 7. The flash on the selfie camera was a nice touch in this price bracket, though.
As with other Sony handsets the Xperia X1 Ultra comes with a dedicated camera shutter button, although I did experience the occasional irritating delay as the camera took its sweet time deciding which object in the frame to focus on.
But let’s put these quibbles into perspective. This device is less than half the price of any current flagship smartphones. If you’re in the market for an eye-catching, premium-feel phablet that really shines when it comes to browsing the web or watching videos, the Sony Xperia XA1 Ultra is great value. I was sorry to see it go.
Follow Alan Cooper on Twitter @ alanqcooper.