Sony Xperia go review: Get out, get wet

Introduction

The Sony Xperia go is not a phone to keep on a short leash. Not your kind of phone either if you'd say no to a dip in the pool because you are expecting an important call. The Sony Xperia go lets you join the fun. The midrange package that Sony just brought to the market aims to offer plenty of bang for your buck - and a bang of a time.

The Sony Xperia go official pictures

The Xperia go is a smartphone that you don't need to constantly look after. The little rugged droid will have you covered in situations very few other phones will put up with, let alone survive. Drop it or sink it, the Xperia go will take it without a flinch. And there's more where that came from. Here's the short version of what the Xperia go is all about.

Key features

• IP67 certified for dust and water resistance, wet-finger tracking
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 3.5" 16M-color LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen of HVGA resolution (320 x 480 pixels) at around 165 ppi
• Bravia Mobile engine
• Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread
• Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, Mali-400 GPU, NovaThor U8500 chipset
• 512 MB RAM
• 5 MP autofocus camera, single LED flashlight, geotagging, image stabilization, smile detection, touch focus
• 720p video @ 30fps
• Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot functionality and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS, Wisepilot navigation
• microSD slot (32GB supported, 2GB card included)
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor, notification LED
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• TrackID music recognition
• Relevant package of apps
• MicroUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Adobe Flash support

Main disadvantages

• No ICS out of the box
• Screen resolution a bit low by today's standards
• No arm case and wrist strap in the bundle (ala the Sony Ericsson Xperia active)- available in the Xperia go "Sports Edition"
• No hardware camera shutter key
• No secondary camera, no video calls
• No DivX/XviD video support, 1080p video playback is a no go, too
• No ANT+ support for connection to sports peripherals (unlike the Xperia active)

Now, who said you can only have two out of the three if you're after compact size, rugged build and performance under the same roof. The Sony Xperia go has the brains to go with the toughness and is still compact enough to carry around and slip into any pocket.

To make it even better, Sony has addressed two of the main issues we had with the predecessor - the Xperia active. There's now a capable dual-core chipset under the hood and the screen has grown to the far more usable 3.5". We could have probably used some extra pixels, but the Xperia go sounds like a package that's hard to beat as it is.

The Sony Xperia go at HQ

All we need to do now is make sure its real-life performance can cash the checks written by the spec sheet. The unboxing and hardware overview follow right after the break.