Sony Xperia E dual review: Something extra

Introduction

In 2012, Sony decided to alter its smartphone strategy and launched numerous affordable entry level smartphones, aiming to bring solid Android at prices close to those of some featurephones.

It seems the move paid off handsomely, as the company is continuing the push at the start of this year. The Xperia E dual, like its name suggests, is the dual-SIM half of the wallet-friendly and reasonably feature-packed Xperia E duo.

Sony Xperia E dual official pictures

The Xperia E and Xperia E dual have identical internals, with the extra SIM slot the only notable hardware difference. However, that same SIM slot is probably what prevented Sony from shipping the Xperia E dual with Jelly Bean, like its single-SIM twin. Ice Cream Sandwich is still an extremely competent platform full of nice features, but it already has two successors, so it does come as a slight disappointment for us.

Sony Xperia E dual official pictures

Still, corners were always going to be cut when we talk a smartphone with this kind of price. And the Xperia E dual still has plenty going for it so the lack of Jelly Bean is not something that should make you lose interest in it altogether. Let's take a closer look the all the features it has to offer.

Key features

• Dual-SIM (dual stand-by)
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band UMTS support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 3.5" 256K-color capacitive TFT touchscreen of HVGA resolution (320 x 480)
• Android OS v4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich
• 1 GHz Cortex-A5 CPU, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227A chipset
• 512 MB of RAM
• 2GB of user-accessible built-in storage (4GB total)
• microSD slot (32GB supported)
• 3.15 MP fixed-focus camera, geo-tagging
• VGA video @ 30fps
• Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
• GPS with A-GPS
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• User-accessible battery, Li-Ion 1530 mAh

Main disadvantages

• Feeble chipset
• Poor screen quality
• Fixed-focus camera with poor image quality, No LED flash
• No front-facing camera
• Mediocre audio output

The Sony Xperia E specs sheet is not stuff from the geeks' dreams, but it makes it extremely competitive in its own price class. The chipset does raise concerns, but since it's not going to need to deal with a demanding 720p display, it might turn out quite adequate. The lower screen resolution itself is not that much of a problem either as it's spread on a pretty compact screen by today's standards.

Sony Xperia E dual studio pictures

As usual, we start the review than with our traditional hardware tour. We'll meet you right after the break.