Sony Ericsson ruled the smartphone roost before Johnnies-come-lately — such as those from Korea or a certain company named after a fruit — usurped its crown. Public memory is short and the maker of the first widely successful smartphone on the market has now largely been consigned to the backwaters in sales.
Until now. With a slew of next-generation devices running Android instead of previous favourite Symbian, Sony Ericsson seems back after the count. The Xperia Neo is a member of the Xperia family and the junior sibling of the flagship Xperia Arc.
That it aims to be a workhorse rather than a style icon is brought out by its design, specs, size and price. It has a glossy plastic body, chrome highlights, and curved form. Unlike the spectacularly stylish, wafer-thin Arc, the Neo is built primarily to be an ergonomical delight rather than also a visual one. Its curved back makes it very comfortable in the hand and the bulge in the centre gives it a chunky, solid feel even though it's only 13mm thick.
The 3.7-inch screen is sharp, clear and delightfully vibrant. Coupled with its wide-angle aspect, that ratio means you will find yourself reaching for it often while on the metro to watch movies on the go. There's also a micro-HDMI slot if the whim seizes you to view your movies on a bigger screen.
Music playback is a Sony Ericsson forte and the Neo, aided by a 3.5mm headphone jack, follows its stablemates in delivering excellent sonic quality.
A defining feature of the Neo is its camera. Picture quality is excellent in still mode and outstanding in movie mode. The camera function loads instantly when you press the shutter button on the right edge of the instrument. Auto focus is equally fast, as is the flash, with face detection adding more punch to portraits. But while the still pictures can get a bit fuzzy at low light levels, it is the HD video capture that stands out with its sharpness, clarity and sound capture.
To play all this back is the 480x854 pixel screen — sharp, packing in loads of detail and vibrancy, with punchy colours and good contrast.
The Neo runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread and its 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset provides enough power for snappy performance. It's not a dual-core chip and so not quite level with the best, but it serves the purpose of this phone and can even run the latest games. In fact, the Neo seems to be mainly a noticeably faster gaming device than even the iPhone 4.
The Neo is a typical Android phone with several positives. Among them is breezy internet surfing with full Flash support, which Apple's offerings do not generally have.
At Dh1,799, the price matches the intent, which is to do a lot of things well with a modicum of style. The Xperia Neo is positioned as a practical, functional, everyday, no-frills-yet-not-unstylish, volume churning smartphone. But in an increasingly frivolous market, it remains to be seen whether it churns those volumes or not.
