Sony Xperia E dual review: Something extra

Performance benchmarks

The Sony Xperia E dual is powered by a Qualcomm MSM7227A chipset, which packs a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A5 processor, 512MB of RAM and Adreno 200 GPU. Those are hardly the guts of a benchmark champion, but they are quite common among entry level smartphones.

As was to be expected, the raw CPU performance is quite poor, even when you don't care for multi-core architectures.

BenchmarkPi

Lower is better

• Sony Xperia go
  543
• Sony Xperia sola
  551
• HTC Desire X
  639
• LG Optimus L7
  773
• Sony Xperia J
  790
• Sony Xperia E dual
  800
• Sony Xperia tipo
  987
• Sony Xperia miro
  1037
• Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus
  1037

Quadrant and GeekBench 2 gives the smartphone an all-round grade for processing (calculative and graphic, memory speed, SD card writing, etc). The Xperia E did quite well in the first one, posting a very decent score. It didn't come close to the other contestants at GeekBench 2, but that's because we normally only run this benchmark on far more capable smartphones.

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5450
• Sony Xperia T
  4774
• Motorola RAZR i
  4125
• Sony Xperia SL
  3396
• Sony Xperia J
  1859
• Sony Xperia E dual
  2362

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1845
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• Sony Xperia V
  1638
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  1634
• Sony Xperia T
  1625
• iPhone 5
  1601
• HTC One S
  1589
• Sony Xperia E dual
  496

The Adreno 200 GPU is an old design, but it can handle the HVGA resolution on most occassions. As you an see from the graphic benchmarks it managed to score 27.7 fps on NenaMark 2 and 30.9 fps on the newly released Epic Citadel - an excellent result for a mid-range device, suggesting that you'll be able to play quite a few games on it. It won't always be the smoothest experience, but lower demanding titles should offer very playable framerates.

NenaMark 2

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia E dual
  27.7
• HTC Sensation XE
  23.0
• Sony Xperia J
  19.6
• LG Optimus L7
  19.3
• Sony Xperia miro
  15.9
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  15.4
• HTC Explorer
  15.1
• Samsung Galaxy Y Duos
  13.2
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket
  12.9
• Samsung Galaxy Ace
  12.0

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Nexus 4
  53.9
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3
• Oppo Find 5
  38.6
• Sony Xperia E dual
  30.9

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo Find 5
  30
• LG Optimus G
  29
• Apple iPhone 5
  27
• Nexus 4
  26
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15
• HTC One X+
  12
• HTC One X
  9
• Sony Xperia E dual
  2.1

Web browsing benchmarks scores were reasonable considering the Xperia E dual internals. It won't be the quickest to load and the smoothest to scroll, but it's not too bad either.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• HTC Desire X
  2259
• Sony Xperia E dual
  2824
• Sony Xperia J
  2853
• HTC Desire V
  3299
• Sony Xperia tipo
  3531
• Sony Xperia miro
  3532
• LG Optimus L7
  3661
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  5911
• HTC Explorer
  10784

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G
  2555
• Nokia Lumia 820
  1760
• Samsung Omnia W
  1632
• Samsung Galaxy S III (JB)
  1247
• Sony Xperia E dual
  975
• Sony Xperia J
  587

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Sony Xperia V
  1968
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Meizu MX 4-core
  1468
• Google Nexus 4
  1310
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1065