Sony Xperia sola review: Light 'em up

Google Maps and Wisepilot navigation

The Sony Ericsson Xperia sola comes with a GPS receiver, which took less than a minute to get satellite lock upon a cold start. You can use the A-GPS functionality to get near instantaneous locks. Alternatively, network positioning will do if you only need a rough idea of your location.

Google Maps is a standard part of the Android package and we've covered it many times before. It offers voice-guided navigation in certain countries and falls back to a list of instructions elsewhere.

3D buildings are shown for some of the bigger cities and you can use two-finger camera tilt and rotate to get a better view of the area.

Google Maps

The latest version uses vector maps, which are very data efficient and easy to cache. The app will reroute you if you get off course, even without a data connection.

You can plan routes, search for nearby POI and go into the always cool Street View.

Google Street View

Our Xperia sola came with a Wisepilot trial with 30 days' worth of full navigation license. The app offers info on weather, traffic, speed cameras and alerts.

Wisepilot uses online maps by default, so you'll need a data connection - but it works even in countries where Google Maps Drive doesn't. You can purchase offline maps if you like - a 2-year license for the whole of Europe is 5 Euro and North America is 5 Dollars.

If you decide to go with the online-only version, the Abroad mode makes sense. It will reduce roaming data usage and maps are cached (so, you if you start off at home or your hotel with the phone hooked up to a Wi-Fi network, you'll save even more).

Wisepilot navigation

We just can't promise you that your Xperia sola will also come with the same Wisepilot license, it may be a market-dependent feature.

Play Store

The Android Market is now called the Play Store, but other than the name, it's the same old app store.

It's organized in a few scrollable tabs - categories, featured, top paid, top free, top grossing, top new paid, top new free and trending. The in-app section is untouched though and it's very informative - a description, latest changes, number of downloads and comments with rating. There is usually a demo video and several screenshots for most apps too.

The Android Market

There are all kinds of apps in the Android market and the most important ones are covered (file managers, navigation apps, document readers etc.).