Sony Xperia E review: E-lementary

HVGA display

The Sony Xperia E comes with an HVGA LCD screen, measuring 3.5 inches in diagonal. 320 x 480 pixels and 165ppi density sounds pretty poor for a smartphone these days, but you'll need to search really hard to find better in this price range.

The Xperia E HVGA screen

As for image quality, the Xperia E's display offers fairly low contrast, poor viewing angles and sunlight legibility. Sadly, a mediocre screen is still one of the things you have to live with if you shop smartphones at rock bottom prices. Here are the results from our traditional display tests.

As you'll notice, we got some slightly different results when compared to the Xperia E dual - this is likely due to Sony using more than one panel manufacturer.

Display test	50% brightness			100% brightness
	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio	Black, cd/m2	White, cd/m2	Contrast ratio
Sony Xperia E	0.19	157	813	0.50	433	875
Sony Xperia E dual	0.21	181	844	0.54	473	870
Sony Xperia J	0.22	289	1290	0.41	562	1359
HTC Desire X	0.18	226	1273	0.33	421	1275
HTC Desire V	0.33	340	1027	0.48	506	1054
Sony Xperia tipo	-	-	-	0.75	561	751
HTC Desire C	0.23	186	814	0.5	360	723
HTC One X	0.15	200	1375	0.39	550	1410
Sony Xperia U	0.35	287	831	0.55	515	930
Samsung S7500 Galaxy Ace Plus	0.27	239	873	0.6	528	888

Contrast ratio

• Nokia 808 PureView
  4.698
• Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III
  3.419
• Samsung Omnia W
  3.301
• Samsung Galaxy S
  3.155
• Nokia N9
  3.069
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  2.970
• HTC One S
  2.901
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  2.832
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  2.801
• Huawei Ascend P1
  2.655
• Nokia Lumia 900
  2.562
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  2.422
• Motorola RAZR i
  2.366
• Apple iPhone 4S
  2.269
• HTC One X
  2.158
• Nokia N8
  2.144
• Oppo Find 5
  2.088
• Apple iPhone 4
  2.016
• Sony Ericsson Xperia ray
  1.955
• Samsung Galaxy Camera
  1.938
• Sony Xperia V
  1.792
• Sony Xperia U
  1.758
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1.691
• HTC One V
  1.685
• LG Optimus Vu
  1.680
• HTC Desire V
  1.646
• LG Optimus 3D
  1.542
• Nokia Asha 302
  1.537
• Nokia Lumia 610
  1.432
• Gigabyte GSmart G1355
  1.361
• HTC Desire C
  1.300
• LG Optimus L7
  1.269
• LG Optimus L9
  1.227
• Meizu MX
  1.221
• Sony Xperia E
  1.215
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1.203
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket
  1.180
• Sony Xperia tipo
  1.166
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  1.114

And here is the Xperia E's RGB matrix under a microscope, alongside the E dual's.

The Sony Xperia E and E dual displays up close