Sony Xperia XA1 - the best combination of price and stuffing

In 2017, Sony was praised by critics for its flagship Xperia XZ Premium at the World Mobile Congress. At the same time, the brand did not forget to introduce to the world the new Sony Xperia XA1 device, as well as its modifications with the Plus and Ultra prefixes. These are successors of the average series of devices. The XA1 does not have bright chips, but in the arsenal of the Japanese manufacturer, the device is one of the most balanced in price and technical characteristics. Review Sony Xperia XA1 will tell in detail about the key features of the device and its capabilities.

Specifications

The price tag of the new device from the Japanese varies from 17 to 20 thousand rubles depending on the seller. For the money, the buyer gets high performance, a good camera and a high-quality assembly in the Japanese tradition. Characteristics of the Sony Xperia XA1 in the table below.

As can be seen from the presented parameters, the device has a full set of wireless interfaces, the Wi-Fi module implies operation in two bands at the highest speed according to the 802.11ac standard. The device received a prefix DS for the name, which means the presence of two SIM cards.

Sony Xperia XA1

Important! Looking ahead, we note that Sony Xperia XA1 dual has separate SIM slots and memory cards, that is, it allows you to work in two mobile networks and at the same time expand the main memory. For a modern smartphone this is a nice feature.

Design

Sony mobile devices can be treated differently. There are ardent fans of the brand, there are buyers who constantly criticize the company for high prices. However, it should be noted that in terms of design, the brand has never had any problems. These are always beautiful and in some way rigorous smartphones. When you look at the window with mobile phones, the Sony technician is immediately conspicuous, but not always bought.

The design feature of Sony smartphones is characterized by term loop surface. If you transfer it to the Russian language, you get a "looped surface". In Sony Xperia XA1 it is that the metal frames are bent in all directions - towards the display, back, and ends. Despite these roundings, the body itself is visually square, and sharp corners are another feature of the company.

On a note! An interesting fact is that users often complain about these sharp corners in reviews - they tear their pockets. Despite this, the leaders of the brand, and with them the designers stand firmly on their own and in the near future are not going to retreat from the usual form.

Despite the overall similarity of the design of the new device with older devices, the Sony Xperia XA1 DS has a feature - very thin side frames and wide protrusions on the top and bottom. Due to this, the model turned out to be narrow and elongated. It's a bit uncomfortable, but you just need to get used to the phone. With not the smallest diagonal it looks interesting. The back side of the device is matt and completely non-slippery. But it has a significant disadvantage: without a cover or lining the device is very quickly scratched.

The location of the elements on the case is pretty familiar: the camera, the speaker and the sensor are located on the top.In this case, the speaker is under the very end, and the latter is its upper limit. The bottom indent, almost two centimeters wide, does not have any elements, and only at the very bottom near the border with the end face is the speaker re-installed. Thus, the phone when listening to music through the speakers directs the sound towards the user. This is especially nice when watching a movie - the sound is not scattered around.

Control buttons traditionally touch. The glass that protects the display rises just a little above the case, and if you look at it very closely, you will notice small roundness in the 2.5D style.

On the back of the device, the user will see only the camera and flash. They are flush with the back panel and do not protrude at all. Control buttons are located on the right. Power, as usual, a round shape, volume control - an elongated oval shape. Here is the mandatory button for Sony to work with the camera.

The left side contains a sled for SIM cards, as well as a slot for a memory card. Sim cards are placed on a sliding tray. The memory card is immediately inserted into the case. The upper end received a headphone jack and a microphone.At the bottom there is a speaker and a Type-C with OTG support.

In terms of color, the Sony Xperia XA1 phone is available in four versions: pink, gold, black, white. At the same time, the device is of the same color from all sides, and, which is nice - the corresponding color scheme of the main theme was selected for each color. This makes the image of the device completely complete. Regarding the assembly, there are no nuances. The phone is strong and reliable.

Display

Diagonal model is 5 inches. Formally, the surface can be attributed to 2.5D glasses, but, as mentioned above, the slope is very small and almost not noticeable. The device is protected by Gorilla Glass 3. There is effective anti-glare coating. Traditionally for IPS matrices, wide viewing angles, while in contrast to inexpensive matrices, colors are not inverted here. For such a diagonal, the resolution is not the highest - HD, but the device has image enhancement technology, for which Sony for some reason did not come up with the name. The picture on the screen turns out really good, and even in comparison with some FHD phones there is not much difference. In addition, the model has a good color reserve, adequate automatic brightness control, high quality oleophobic coating. No complaints about the display.

On a note! The touch is designed for 4 touches.This, of course, is not 10 like the Chinese, but it’s hard to come up with a problem whereby the screen has to be touched with all fingers of two hands, so there are no questions to the sensor.

Camera

The Sony Xperia XA1 camera is represented by an 8-megapixel wide-angle front sensor, as well as a 23-megapixel main matrix with a 5-fold approximation and hybrid autofocus.

Concerning the front camera can be noted high-quality shooting with good brightness. In the corners of the image does not lose color and accuracy, as sometimes happens with matrices with a wide image capture. Photosensitivity selfie camera - ISO 3200.

The back matrix also has wide angle image capture. The maximum light sensitivity is 6400, but only 3200 are available for manual settings. There is electronic stabilization by proprietary technologyIn most situations, it shows itself worthy. The camera takes high-quality pictures. At night, noise reduction technology works, sometimes it is too intrusive, but the pictures are quite good. For its price issues to the camera does not arise. Big photo lovers will surely find some flaws, but for the vast majority of users it will be excellent.

To control the camera, you need to emphasize that it is not the most convenient, since all the settings are scattered in different corners of the display, but long-time Sony users will not find any problem with this.

Important! There are manual and automatic modes. An interesting mode with augmented reality, when the existing image can be supplemented with different items from the library. Separately, you can download different buns for the camera, if necessary.

Video device can shoot in FHD. Unfortunately, the device decided not to shoot in 4K and slow-mo mode with 960 fps, which are present in expensive brand devices. But this phone is cheaper, so you should not be surprised. According to the picture on the video device is not the best. There is some blurring, but the sound is written well - the noise reduction system works.

Smartphone at work

The smartphone Sony Xperia XA1 dual (G3112) runs on an eight-core Helio P20 processor. This is the 2016 solution, which was developed for devices of the middle price segment. It shows itself quite well. In tests gaining about 60 thousand points. Games run without any problems. High-speed and multitasking.The device memory is represented by 3 gigabytes of RAM and 32 gigabytes of the main drive. Of these, 1.7 and 23 gigabytes are available to the user respectively.

Important! The main memory can be expanded with a memory card. If it is formatted in the phone, then some applications can be dropped on this carrier. Also, the device supports OTG, that is, it understands flash drives connected via a USB adapter.

The device works in LTE networks and supports all possible standards. However, sometimes the device does not catch the network too confidently and may show fewer connection sticks than smartphones from other brands. This does not interfere too much with life, but it seems that the radio module of the phone is a bit lost. This is a fairly standard problem for Sony, so you can’t call it a minus XA1 only.

The radio module in the phone is one, but both SIM cards can work in LTE networks at the same time. This is a good plus for the device. There are no questions about the operation of other interfaces. Wi-Fi supports two bands, NFC allows you to work with travel documents, not to mention paying a smartphone, Bluetooth provides a quick connection to the periphery.

On the battery, the phone is clearly inferior to its competitors.Its stock is very small, especially considering the MediaTek chipset, which has never been famous for energy efficiency. As a result, the device will allow you to enjoy the game process for four hours, you can read thirteen hours, watch movies for about nine hours. Total phone is enough for the working day. The downside is that the device does not support fast or accelerated charging and will take up full capacity in almost three hours.

Conclusion

Sony Xperia XA1 - this is a fairly good representative in the middle price segment. He has a couple of drawbacks - the lack of a finger scanner and not the highest autonomy, but on the other parameters the device shows decent results. Its price in Russia is on average about 20 thousand, and for a Japanese with such parameters it is very nice. Value for money attracts even those customers who are skeptical about this brand. Considering that usually Sony phones are far from being liked by everyone, the XA1 is clearly a step in the right direction to capture the market.

Sony Xperia XA1