Sony Xperia miro review: You too

Introduction

In a world full of phones you wish you could afford, the Sony Xperia miro is one you don't have to wish too hard for. In honesty, Sony didn't work themselves too hard, but when you're putting together a portfolio from scratch, you want it built on solid foundations.

The Xperia miro is another simple package joining the ranks, filling in the blank space between the Xperia tipo and the Xperia go. The miro is a notch above the tipo, and costs an extra few bucks - Sony went about it strictly by the book without taking unnecessary risks.

Sony Xperia miro official pictures

The looks of the Xperia go - minus the rugged treatment - with the Xperia tipo's internals. It's a fairly straightforward mixture that will also fill the price gap between the starter package and the rugged smartphone. Lots of choice for different budgets is the secret to a large and loyal user base.

Let's have a look now at all the features and the possible deal-breakers.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band UMTS support
• 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
• Android OS v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
• 800 MHz Cortex-A5 CPU, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7225A chipset
• 512 MB of RAM
• 4GB of inbuilt storage (2.2GB user available)
• microSD slot (32GB supported)
• 5 MP autofocus camera, single LED flashlight, geotagging, smile detection, touch focus
• VGA video @ 30fps
• Secondary VGA front-facing camera
• 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
• 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery

Main disadvantages

• Middling screen quality
• Non-hot-swappable microSD slot
• No hardware shutter key
• No DivX/XviD support
• Occasional lags in the user interface
• Mediocre audio output

The major improvements over the Xperia tipo are the bigger LED-backlit screen, the higher-res camera and the secondary cam for video calls. The screen is the same size and resolution as the Xperia go's but isn't the Bravia-backed Reality display we've seen on a number of Sony and Sony Ericsson handsets.

Sony Xperia miro live pictures

That and the single-core CPU, as well as the non-rugged build, has helped the Xperia miro lower the price considerably. Overall though, it's clearly a bet on the safe side - the Xperia miro is perfectly on par with its main competitors. So let's give this fella a chance and see what it's really made of.