Sony Xperia V review: Bond’s wetsuit

Introduction

It won't be long before those full-HD five-inchers start stealing the show and the older Xperia generation should be preparing for life in their shadow. It doesn't mean though that the Xperia V cannot hope for a good time.

We don't see why a phone with dual-core Krait and an LTE connectivity shouldn't enjoy life in the midrange. OK, the upper midrange - but the Xperia V isn't easily caught off guard. Of course, people are not as easily impressed today as, say, a year ago. Yet, a select few phones are willing to offer 1080p videos and 13MP stills, while putting an HD touchscreen at your fingertips.

Sony Xperia V water-resistant phone

And there's more to the Xperia V than that. It's more durable than your average smartphone without looking like an army bot. You should've figured it by now, what we have here is a dust and water-resistant Xperia T with 4G connectivity and a tad smaller screen. Oh, well they needed to make sure the wetsuit would still fit the user.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with 42.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• LTE Cat3 DL 100 Mbps UL 50 Mbps
• 4.3" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit Reality LCD touchscreen of 720p resolution (720 x 1280 pixels) with Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine 2; Scratch-resistant glass
• Android OS v4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean coming up
• IP57 certified for dust and water resistance, up to 1 meter immersion for 30 minutes
• Dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU, 1 GB RAM, Adreno 225 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 chipset
• 13 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geotagging, Superior Auto mode
• 1080p video recording @ 30fps with continuous autofocus and stereo sound
• VGA front-facing camera
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n with DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct and hotspot
• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
• 8GB of built-in storage, microSD card slot
• microUSB port with MHL and USB-host support
• Stereo Bluetooth v4.0
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Voice dialing
• Deep Facebook integration
• PlayStation Certified, access to the PS Store
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• NFC connectivity

Main disadvantages

• No JellyBean at launch
• Relatively modest battery capacity
• Video recording fails to impress
• No hardware shutter key
• Comes across as overpriced

The one thing that doesn't help Sony look particularly good is the tardy arrival of the latest software. The Xperia V is still to get Jelly Bean - and it will most likely be JB 4.1. There have been reports of Sony pushing back the Xperia V's launch on certain markets to put the latest software in. That makes sense but is perhaps part of the reason for the limited supply, that's been keeping prices quite high.

A bit of a vicious circle there, not too good for Sony, but hopefully not for long. Hopefully, the Xperia V should be getting the Jelly Bean treatment as early as February.

The Sony Xperia V at HQ

Elsewhere, the Sony Xperia V makes a pretty strong case for itself. The HD display is looking good, the camera on the back is ready to serve 13MP stills, there's LTE and the dual-core Krait is humming along. And the Xperia V is ready to take calls at the poolside or in the shower.

Sounds like an exciting package, and good-looking too. Hit us up on page 2 and let's get started.