Software
At this point, you’d think that la late
fall launch for an Android phone would guarantee it ships with Jelly Bean out
of the box but you’d be wrong. However, we won’t criticize Sony too hard for
unleashing Xperia TL with the 4.0.4 version of Ice Cream Sandwich. The company
has served loyal customers very well by being as transparent as possible about
the Xperia software upgrades and then actually delivering them (for the most
part). Thus we have no doubt that the TL will see Android 4.2 one day – we’re
just not sure when. Unfortunately, the company’s playing coy and won’t commit
to a hard release date.
Xperia
TL’s interface
We have mentioned before, but to repeat:
Xperia TL is the device that Ion should have been when it was released 6 months
ago. It has a modern dual-core S4 processor and runs on Ice Cream Sandwich
(which is not the latest version of Android). But we cannot shake off the
feeling of boring, this is another phone behind the time. Clearly, other
high-end smartphones which is equipped with the same CPU setup still exist, but
they distinguish by providing more RAM, greater battery life, unparalleled
optics, higher resolution, near-stock Android or even Jelly Bean. Here, all we
get is the addition of James Bond “Skyfall” – related multimedia content
(pre-set as the default wallpaper, ringtone and notification sound) and one
SmartTag included in the box. Is that enough to make the TL stand apart? If
you’re shaking your head, you’ve already known the answer.
The
phone’s applications
Apart from that, the ICS capture of Sony is
very interesting, there is nothing to belittle and provide a consistent
experience with only a few changes. First of all, the company enhanced the way
that users can customize the phone. Typically, a long click on any of the home
screens would launch a dialog box in the middle of the screen, but on the TL, a
transparent pane appears up top with 2 circular icons on either side: one for
wallpapers and themes and the other for widgets. Sony’s also baked quick
setting access into the drop-down notification tray, letting users easily with
data, notification sound, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Building upon a tradition that the company
started with the Xperia Tablet S, this Sony-made smartphone also has 3 of the
company’s core media apps: Album, Movie and Walkman. These apps works just like
there name implies, with Album offering several of options including a large
range of colors, FX, crop and filter options, in addition to map view for
geo-tagged shots. Meanwhile, Walkman offers the intuitive MP3 playing
experience with a visualizer option, SensMe for categorizing tracks according
to theme and an equalizer for sound adjustment. Of the 3 apps, Movies is the
most fundamental, containing nothing more than 4 pre-installed Bond clips.
Moreover, you get an Xperia link baked into settings, allowing you to connect
the TL’s network connection to other Xperia tablets or VAIO PCs and small
“floating” apps for calculator, notes, voice memos and timer, accessible via
the task manager, which hover above open apps.
The
phone’s calculator and calendar
It’s not a Nexus (though we hope to see it
the day), so you know there will be many floating software. Except for common
apps such as Calendar, Clock, Messaging and Calculator, you will find 26
third-party apps – 10 of which belong to AT&T- cannot be uninstalled, only
disabled. That means unless you root your device, these apps will live on
behind the scenes, hogging up your allotted 16GB of internal storage. At the
very least, you have the ability to clear them out of your app drawer.
Performance and Battery life
Comparison
chart of performance
The TL is quick, smooth and, best of all,
reliable. In our time with the device, we never once encountered a force close,
frozen app or evidence of lag. The dual-core S4 inside is very quickly,
handling a multiple of tasks with ease. As you expected, navigation through 5
home screens and access to the app drawer are affected without a hitch. Apps
load quickly, while games like Need for Speed Shift run smoothly with no loss
of frame rate.
In fact, the TL appears to be on par with
those phones have similar specs, but how does it fair in synthetic tests? We
pitted it again 2 other devices with S4 chips: AT&T’s Galaxy S III and One
X variants. And as you can see below, all 3 phones equipped with the MSM8960
processor bring nearly similar results, with TL win clearly in AnTuTu CF-Bench.
Although we mentioned to 1 GB of RAM as a con earlier, you can see here that
there is no necessary in doubling the RAM for giving GS III a competitive
advantage. In practice, the extra helping of RAM barely gives the GS III an
edge in Quadrant testing.
Sony
Xperia TL
·
Quadrant: 4,892
·
Vellamo: 1,767
·
AnTuTu: 7,091
·
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 1,850
·
GLBenchmark Egypt Offscreen (fps): N/A
·
CF-Bench: 9,580
·
Battery life: 5:50
Galaxy S III (AT&T)
·
Quadrant: 5,084
·
Vellamo: 2,153
·
AnTuTu: 6,713
·
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 1,926
·
GLBenchmark Egypt Offscreen (fps): 54
·
CF-Bench: 9,439
·
Battery life: 9:10
HTC One X (AT&T)
·
Quadrant: 4,784
·
Vellamo: 2,259
·
AnTuTu: 6,956
·
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 1,453
·
GLBenchmark Egypt Offscreen (fps): 56
·
CF-Bench: 9,479
·
Battery life: 8:55
The Xperia TL’s
short battery life is its biggest disadvantage by far. With moderate use, we
were able to eke out nearly a full working day of use from the non-removable
1.850mAh battery. Under the pressure of the official battery test – Twitter is
set to synchronize every 15 minutes, one push email account active, brightness
set to 50% and radios for Wi-Fi and GPS enabled – the device notched just under
6 hours, which is similar to what we found with the TL’s European counterpart,
the T.
