Sony Xperia E review: E-lementary

E-lementary

GSMArena team, 22 April 2013.

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.

Sony Xperia E
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

Reader comments

  • limestone steve
  • 01 Jun 2016
  • Bw@

Cheap price so don't expect miracles Camera usable and limitations with storage You get what you pay for.

  • AnonD-340973
  • 12 Dec 2014
  • mxv

Every time I log on facebbook it crashes and then restarts it self

  • nE0n1nja
  • 04 Oct 2014
  • dMK

THis is a horrible phone! Why? It has 600 MB "Phone" memory, which is separate from the 2 GB internal memory. It fills up pretty damn fast and now I can't update any of my apps because I get "Insufficient storage space available" ...