Sony Xperia M2 Dual D2302 Hands-On & First Impressions

The Xperia M2 from Sony is one of those in the mid-range which comes from a well known brand, but the pricing of the device is kept in a range where some other excellent devices with better specifications are available. The Sony Xperia M2, launched in April 2014, comes with a 4.8-inch display and under the hood there is a Snapdragon 400 chipset powering the smartphone. The phone looks quite decent and all the three colors, i.e. Black, White and Purple, bring out no much difference because of the glassy look and the standard Sony design used in the recent Xperia devices, and of course, the design which many applauded Sony for.

The display of Sony Xperia M2 is a qHD resolution one under the 4.8-inch screen, and the design of the smartphone looks neat with the solid framing, the speaker grill in the bottom, the buttons and slots on the sides and a dedicated camera key on the side for the photo enthusiasts. There’s the scratch resistant touch panel with the glass cover, and the display is made with the Sony TV technology.

Performance wise, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, with the MSM8926 & MSM8226 chipsets based on location, has four cores clocking at 1.2 GHz, and the RAM support is of 1GB, while the graphics are handled by the Adreno 305 GPU. For a neatly powered device, the 1GB RAM shouldn’t really be supporting heavy multitasking because the OS itself eats up around 40-50% of the RAM on no multitasking.

The battery capacity of 2300 mAh is something catchy and helpful in the long run, and Sony tries to make it better with the power saving modes such as the Stamina mode which is said to be minimizing the battery drain. When the device is put on Stamina mode, there is nothing being done on standby as the connectivity is turned off, and you would be able to just receive the text messages and calls via your network provider. But, this again is customizable and you can select the apps which you wanted to run even on standby during the Stamina mode.

The device has a unibody design, thus you cannot open the back cover, and the slots for MicroSD card and the two SIM cards are located on the sides, with the slots being easy to open with the cap.

Camera Quality

The rear 8-megapixel camera does quite a lot when you talk about the effects or special features, but the video recording is limited to 720p HD quality. The Sony Exmor RS for Mobile image sensor is what tries to make the capture still and neat. There’s 4x digital zoom which would compromise the quality a lot, but what’s on focus here is these features of the camera – Geo-tagging, Image Stabiliser, Red-eye Reduction, Auto Scene Recognition, Send to Web, Smile Shutter, Touch Focus, Touch Capture, HDR, Quick Launch, Flash Support, White Balance, Self-timer, Camera Apps – Social Live, Timeshift Burst, AR Effect, Picture Effect, Portrait Retouch, Motiongraph, Auto Focus, Face Detection, Fast Capture, Superior Auto, Sweep Panorama, Video Light.

The Timeshift Burst would take 61 photos in a span of two seconds, of which you can choose to retain either all or any selected photos in your album. There’s HDR mode for a better light photo, and the Social live is something where your live camera would be shown on the social networks and you can interact with friends.

Sony Xperia M2 Dual Camera Samples

Images scaled down to 535x300px

Interface

The Xperia M2 runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean OS with the intuitive interface making the qHD display look better than what the numbers talk, and the storage available in the device is 5GB for the user although it’s 8GB internal storage stated by the company. The user can expand the storage by using an SD card, which could be a maximum of 32GB.

There are a lot of pre-installed apps in the Xperia M2, the bloatware which already eats up the available storage, and we are sure not going to use each of the app provided by the company out of the box. The Box app gives 50GB of free storage for the M2 buyers, and the other important apps that come pre-installed, include – BigFlix, Converter, Pixlr Express, Smart Connect, Socialife News, Sony Liv, Sony Music, Sony Select, TripAdvisor, TrackID, Xperia Care Support, OfficeSuite, Walkman, Wisepilot for Xperia, X4 Video Player, Xperia Lounge along with the Google Play services which include some important which we uses on daily basis.

The connectivity options are in a big number – 4G LTE modem making it possible for the user to connect to the LTE network in their locality for faster connectivity, and some of the important and useful connectivity options apart from the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth include the following:

• One-touch sharing – this uses the NFC to share the files between two Android devices having the NFC connectivity, and this requires just a simple touch
• One-touch listening – for now, it’s between the Sony Xperia M2 and the Sony speakers which have the NFC enabled
• One-touch mirroring – a simple touch of the smartphone to the Sony TV’s remote will start showing the photos of the M2 on the TV screen
• One-touch backup – there’s a Sony Personal Content Station which would keep a backup of all the photos and videos you capture in the Xperia M2

Apart from these, the Xperia M2 also has the Miracast support, MHL support and dlna support for output of the screen on larger screens.

The sensors included in the Xperia M2 are Accelerometer, Proximity Sensor, Magnetometer, Ambient Light Sensor, eCompass.

The device comes for a price of Rs. 21000 in the Indian market, and it’s quite an expensive one for what is being included, and for a camera which doesn’t put out any decent captures even on bright conditions, and you are paying the price only for the good design and the neat interface.