Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo review: More than a sequel

Introduction

It’s a sequel. Same cast and the same story but with a new lead and a new director. Shot in HD. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo is to settle some unfinished business at the box office. A year stands between the Vivaz and the Neo and Android does make all the difference.

The XPERIA Neo is part of Sony Ericsson’s new droid lineup and takes advantage of all the new features – the LED-backlit Reality display with Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine, an 8 megapixel Exmor R camera sensor, 720p video with continuous autofocus and the latest Android – 2.3 Gingerbread.

Key features
Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
3.7" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) on Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine
Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread
1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset
512 MB RAM
8 MP autofocus camera, LED flash, geotagging
720p video @ 30fps, continuous autofocus
Front facing VGA camera, video calls
Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
GPS with A-GPS
microSD slot (32GB supported, 8GB card included)
Accelerometer and proximity sensor
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
Stereo FM radio with RDS
microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
Voice dialing
Adobe Flash 10.2 support

microHDMI port 

Main disadvantages

Display has poor viewing angles
The competition has dual-core CPUs, 1080p video
No smart dialing
Loudspeaker has below average performance
No DivX/XviD support
Memory card slot under the battery cover

The Neo benefits from new technology but it does well to focus on the important stuff: imaging. It’s not the 3.7 touchscreen that makes this phone, nor is it the 1 GHz CPU or the latest Android Gingerbread. And hey, these are all fine features to have. But in the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Neo the HD-enabled cameraphone comes before the all-round droid smartphone.