It takes two to tango but the Japanese consumer electronics major Sony is offering an extra move to maximise your fun and play time. The company seems to have learned the lesson in its mid-range smartphone section as its new offering, Xperia T3, is a complete entertainment package which suits the wallet (R27,990 only) as well as the personality of the target audience?the hip, the young and the playful.
Powered by a Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A7 processor, the T3 is faster than its predecessor (T2 Ultra) and is lighter. After using the phone when we switched to other handsets, suddenly the other handsets felt quite heavy. Although the operating system interface experience remains the same as it uses the latest Android operating system v4.4.2 (KitKat).
Coming to style, the device?s sleek design with a choice of three colours (black, white and purple), is carefully crafted to complement the user?s trendy look. It is the perfect live-in phone that caters to all your social needs. The fun begins with the camera though Sony has reduced the power of it in comparison to the T2.
The T3 sports a 8 MP camera capable of clicking pictures with a resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels. The camera also boasts of a auto-focus complemented by a LED flash to make clicking pictures in the dark easy. But what is exceptional is the Geo-tagging feature along with the social mode. You can click a picture, tag its location and immediately upload to your preferred social media site especially Facebook. Sony has also combined the Cybershot features in the camera?smile and face detection. It also has HD recording and panorama mode along with five other in-built camera modes. The front camera powered with a 1.1 MP lens is perfect for video calling (though there is no development in this section compared to its predecessor).
The T3 will excite and attract you with its display. Its impressive IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen sports the Bravia (mobile) engine 2 that is capable of handling 16 million colours. Unlike the other members of its family, T3 has the advantage of having the Trilumious Display, that enriches your viewing experience with a wider palette of rich, natural colours. The size of its screen is 5.3 inches with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. Watching video on the screen is fun and can be zoomed to cover the whole screen without losing quality.
The T3?s wonderful features doesn?t stop here. It comes with onboard storage capability of 8 GB but it?s backed up by a microSD card slot. Also, it comes with a Sony box storage of 50 GB but the user has to download the app. While NFC, 4G LTE along with GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth keeps the phone well connected at all ends, the 2500 mAh battery keeps it going for a good long time. The phone uses a micro SIM at the side of the phone. The battery case cannot be opened which might be a hindrance for some.
The phone?s favourite and Sony?s strong suite Walkman app is better than ever and gives a complete listening experience. The clear sound feature controls the volume so that hearing is easy and at the same time ensures that your eardrums are safe. But the earphones which comes in the box are not great and its speakers are also not that powerful. So a change of headphone is suggested to experience the capability of the Walkman app.
T3 is also the example that Sony wants to modulate Android OS and wants to create a unique experience for its customer. It has a built in social app that keeps the user updated about news and social media posts in general. In order to make the switchover of phones easy for its users, it has developed a free app (Xperia transfer) that aides in transferring data from an old phone to the T3. Browsing on the phone is fast too as the T2 takes advantage of the HTML5 browser pre-installed in it.
SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, IM and PushMail are not different from the other brands. The phone also comes in with a lot of pre-loaded apps and has a photo editor, Gmail client app and a file explorer. The phone also has a diagonistics test application via which the user can check the condition of the phone or if any component is not working properly. Talking about what comes in the box, the charger of the phone is not very long and is combined with the USB chord. The headphones are average but are sturdy.
So after using the phone for a couple of weeks, we can say that the phone is a perfect companion for the style conscious consumer looking for a phone that is unique, powerful mix of design and technology.
Estimated street price: Rs 27,990
Anirban Ghoshal
