Sony Xperia M review: Morning show

Google Now at your command

Google Now gives you a short overview of information it believes is relevant to you right now. Going to work in the morning? Google Now knows this and lets you know if there's a big traffic jam on your usual way to the office, and offers you a re-route.

It can interpret a lot of things from your search history as well. If you've been searching for, let's say, your favorite football team, Google Now will prepare a card showing you the next match the team is playing and will provide you score updates once the game begins.

Google Now

Google has also integrated Voice Actions. They can handle stuff like sending messages (SMS or email), initiating a voice call, asking for directions, taking a note or opening a site. Google Now can also launch apps, check and manage your calendar and look for nearby places of interest and stuff like movie openings in theaters.

Google Now on the Xperia L gets activated with a press-and-hold-and-upward-swipe of the virtual Home button. You can either type or talk to it and the app will give you one of its info cards (if available) and read you its contents aloud (you can disable this from the app settings). If there's no card to help with the answer to your question Google Now will simply initiate a Google web search instead.

Synthetic benchmarks

The Sony Xperia M uses a Snapdragon S4 Plus chipset with two Krait cores clocked at 1GHz, 1GB RAM and Adreno 305 GPU. It's a chipset made popular by entry-level Windows Phone handsets but it is not that popular with Android.

The Krait cores and Adreno 305 should have the advantage over dual and quad-core Cortex-A5 processors and their Adreno 203 companions that are the hardware of choice for phones like the Samsung Galaxy Core, the HTC Desire SV and Desire 600 dual sim.

Single core performance is okay - higher than the Galaxy Core and Desire 600 dual sim even though their processors are clocked at 1.2GHz. Architecture plays a big role here, but so does clock speed - the dual-core Krait in the HTC One mini is at 1.4GHz and that results in a noticeable advantage in performance.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  166
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• HTC One mini
  293
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  346
• Sony Xperia M
  400
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  409
• Sony Xperia L
  435
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  499
• Sony Xperia go
  543
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  554
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  578
• HTC Desire X
  639
• Sony Xperia E dual
  800
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  831

The multi-threaded benchmark Linpack puts the Xperia M between last year's flagships, the Galaxy S III and HTC One X. It's also well ahead of the Desire 600 dual sim and double what the Galaxy Core did.

Linpack

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  788
• HTC One
  646
• Sony Xperia Z
  630
• HTC Butterfly
  624
• LG Optimus G
  608
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  413
• Sony Xperia SP
  348
• HTC One mini
  320
• Nexus 4
  213.5
• Sony Xperia L
  191
• HTC One X+
  177
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  175
• Sony Xperia M
  168.3
• HTC One X
  160
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  107.7
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  85

Geekbench 2, however, thinks the quad-core Desire 600 dual-sim is practically a match for the Xperia M, while the dual-core Galaxy Core lags behind again.

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  3227
• HTC One
  2708
• Sony Xperia Z
  2173
• HTC Butterfly
  2143
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1937
• Sony Xperia SP
  2105
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• iPhone 5
  1601
• HTC One mini
  1417
• Sony Xperia L
  1073
• Sony Xperia M
  973
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  970
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  678

Let's move on to the full system benchmarks. AnTuTu thinks the Desire 600 dual sim is as good as the HTC One mini and ahead of the Xperia M. Quadrant seems to agree and keep in mind the Desire is rendering graphics at qHD resolution rather than FWVGA like the Xperia M (that's about 26% more pixels). Still, the One mini is ahead but not by far in these two tests (it has a higher-res 720p screen to project images on, after all).

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  14518
• HTC Butterfly
  12631
• HTC One mini
  11434
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  11203
• Sony Xperia M
  9902
• Sony Xperia L
  9746
• Nokia Lumia 620
  9140
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  7408
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  6650

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  7153
• HTC One mini
  6048
• Sony Xperia V
  5816
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  5053
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  4998
• Sony Xperia L
  4279
• Sony Xperia M
  4147
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  3152

Resolution doesn't come into play with GLBenchmark 2.5 and 2.7, both render at 1080p offscreen. The results of the Sony Xperia M are very close to those of the HTC One mini (which also uses Adreno 305), which leads us to believe the GPUs in both phones are running at the same clock speed.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  43
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  41
• Google Nexus 4
  32
• Sony Xperia Z
  31
• Sony Xperia SP
  31
• Apple iPhone 5
  30
• LG Optimus G
  21
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  17
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  17
• HTC One mini
  15
• Sony Xperia M
  12
• HTC One X
  11

GLBenchmark 2.7 T-Rex (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  17.1
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  17.1
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  16
• LG Optimus G
  13.9
• Sony Xperia Z
  13.5
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  6.4
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  6.3
• HTC One mini
  5.6
• Sony Xperia M
  4.7

In real-world performance that results in a good but not perfect framerate in Epic Citadel (which is rendered by the phone at the screen's resolution). 53.2fps will be enough for current 3D games to run smoothly at High Quality, but future, heavier games might have to choose performance-oriented graphics settings. Still, the Xperia M is an entry-level phone and we don't even bother running these benchmarks on Adreno 203-powered devices, so that should tell you something. It may not be up there with the big boys, but it's no slouch either.

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  59.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  57.1
• HTC One
  56.4
• HTC One mini
  56
• Sony Xperia Z
  55.6
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  55.5
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  54.7
• Nexus 4
  53.9
• Asus Padfone 2
  53.4
• Sony Xperia M
  53.2
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3

Good single-threaded performance should have resulted in good JavaScript performance, but that's not the case. The Xperia M is sandwiched between its dual-SIM adversaries, while higher-end minis are ahead. Windows Phone 8 devices that use the same chipset also beat the Xperia.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1185
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  1196
• HTC One mini
  1237
• HTC 8S
  1413
• Nokia Lumia 620
  1435
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  1654
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  1660
• Sony Xperia M
  1867
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  2197
• HTC Desire X
  2259
• Sony Xperia L
  2539
• Sony Xperia E dual
  2824
• Sony Xperia J
  2853
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  3578

BrowserMark 2 and Vellamo run more comprehensive browser benchmarks and give the Xperia M a slight edge.

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2314
• HTC One
  2262
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  2170
• HTC One mini
  2164
• Sony Xperia V
  1957
• Sony Xperia L
  1809
• Sony Xperia M
  1642
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  1592
• HTC 8S
  1556
• Nokia Lumia 620
  1469
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  1469
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  1154
• Sony Xperia E
  992
• Sony Xperia E dual
  975
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  908
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  714

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia SP
  2497
• HTC One
  2382
• HTC One mini
  2252
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  2060
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2019
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Sony Xperia M
  1800
• Sony Xperia L
  1640
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  1572
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  1366
• Nexus 4
  1310
• Samsung Galaxy Fame
  1234
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  1072
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1065

In the end, the Sony Xperia M has an advantage over quad-core Cortex-A5 phones in CPU performance and only a minor lead in web performance. It's the Adreno 305 that makes this chipset really worthwhile - it allows you to play 3D games that would otherwise be too graphic intensive for Adreno 203 phones.