Sony Xperia J review: Junior league

Introduction

A trimmed-down version of the Bond phone or a remake of the Xperia Arc, the Sony Xperia J knows looks are important to reasonable spenders, too, and doesn't get carried away with the level of equipment. What it offers over a very similarly equipped Sony Xperia miro is a bigger and higher-res screen, which sure sounds like the right thing to get users interested.

On top of that, the Xperia J has borrowed design cues from the current flagship and an old-time favorite, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. So, although Sony has pretty good coverage of the low-to-midrange market, the Xperia J is easily an attention-grabber.

Sony Xperia J official pictures

You may have lost count of all the Xperia droids released over the past year - less than a year actually, which is quite impressive - but the Xperia J isn't likely to slip under your radar if you're on the market for an affordable smartphone. The J is a sensible package with an important advantage over similarly equipped and similarly priced competitors.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band UMTS support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 4.0" 16M-color TFT capacitive touchscreen of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) at around 245 ppi
• Android OS v4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich
• 1 GHz Cortex-A5 CPU, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227A chipset
• 512 MB of RAM
• 4GB of inbuilt storage (2GB user available)
• microSD slot (32GB supported)
• 5 MP autofocus camera, single LED flashlight, geotagging, 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
• 1750 mAh Li-Ion battery

Main disadvantages

• Noticeable lag
• Non-hot-swappable microSD slot
• Image quality a bit of a letdown
• No hardware shutter key
• No DivX/XviD support
• Feeble loudspeaker

No deals are perfect in this price range, which on the other hand is brimming with offerings, so the Xperia J will have to consistently show the right attitude. Sony gave the screen and design probably its best shot within the budget but there's more to a smartphone than that.

Sony Xperia J live pictures

So, that's what we are going to explore today. We'll start with the design and build as usual, before we move on to Ice Cream Sandwich and what kind of performance and features you can expect of the Xperia J.