All the best Android smartphones today have at least one or a bunch of distinguishing features – dual-core processor, Super AMOLED display, 3D capability, etc. They also tend to be overpriced.

With its latest Xperia smartphone, Sony Ericsson has dared to think out of the box. The Xperia Ray has none of the features mentioned above, but still manages to impress with its specs. And it's aggressively priced in the Rs 20,000 price bracket – positioning itself midway between disappointing budgets and wallet-emptying powerhorses. Will this be a winning formula for Sony Ericsson?

Unboxing

Opening the packaging of the Ray, I'm taken aback by its svelte form factor. After the humungous 4-inchers that have been landing on my review desk, it takes me a while to get used to the idea of handling this petite phone. Reluctantly powering up the Ray, I'm surprised at how quickly one can get familiar with it. And ‘surprised' was generally my reaction the entire time I was testing the device.

The screen was amazingly fluid – I was able to scroll through my home page on TweetDeck with smooth, liquid movements, and the phone is intelligent enough to distinguish between gestures. Contrary to my initial apprehensions, the 3.3-inch screen wasn't detrimental to the user interface of the phone. Icons are about the same size as that on any Android, with the only difference being the number of icons that can fit on the screen. Widgets too look well spaced out; I particularly liked the Media shortcuts widget which has the music player on top, photos in the middle and a quick access bar to all your media at the bottom.

The only time when I felt the limiting pinch of a small screen was when I played a few games downloaded from the Android Market, like Angry Birds Seasons. It's just not optimised for a small screen, and the result was that the birds looked tiny and I couldn't enjoy the graphics of the game as much as I would have liked to.

Build quality

The Ray's construction lends itself to being one of those phones that's more discreet than flashy. That said, it's a really elegant handset, and one I wouldn't hesitate to flaunt. I really liked the black unit that I got for review, although there are a few trendier colour options available like white, pink and gold. Thankfully, Sony Ericsson has not opted for the standard four-button bezel that's common on so many Android phones. Instead, what you get are two touch buttons – return and options on either side, and a physical home button in the shape of an arc (which I think should have definitely been incorporated on the Arc!). I was quite miffed that the touch buttons weren't backlit though, even though they're intuitive enough to use.

The back panel has a nice rubberised feel, and holds the 8.1-meg rear camera with LED flash. Other features are a front-facing camera, volume rocker switch, mini-USB port and 3.5mm headphone jack. Unlike the Arc, the Ray does not have a mini HDMI port, even though the camera can capture 720p HD videos.

User interface

The Ray runs on Android v2.3 (Gingerbread), which is the most up-to-date software you could hope for on a smartphone at present. There are five customisable homescreens, to which you can add widgets and shortcuts. You can also group your favourite apps into folders, which is great if you download frequently from the Android market. From the menu screen, you can arrange apps alphabetically, by most used, recently installed or in any order you wish – a really convenient option to get access to what you want easily. There's also an easy delete option which highlights apps that have been downloaded from the Market.

The phone supports push mail notifications, and I set up a Gmail account in a few easy steps. The email app also comes with a handy preview pane which you can pull down to reveal the entire email.

Sony Ericsson's Timescape widget is still around for all your social networking sites, texts and calls, but I much prefer using apps from the Android market instead. Speaking of which, Sony Ericsson has a dedicated Android Market channel, so when you open the Market, the portal replaces the My Apps tab on the homescreen. It's pretty convenient because it lists original apps from Sony Ericsson, as well as those best tailored to phones from the company.

The Ray is quite the media magnet, and is great for watching videos, listening to music or playing games. I watched a few episodes of ‘Wilfred' in HD, and the details were sharp and the playback smooth. Despite Angry Birds being a bit of a let down in the gaming category, I must confess that I was addicted to Aporkalypse, which I played constantly up to level 19, which I'm still stuck on.

Shutterbugs will love the camera on the Ray, which doesn't have the usual bunch of scene modes but manages to capture great photos, even in low light. It has Face Detection and Smile detection, and you can tap to focus and shoot.

I took a bunch of videos as well, and the camera records fast movement without freezing, and picks up sound really well too.

Performance

The phone runs a 1GHz Scorpion processor, and despite not having the power of the dual-cores in the market, it never froze during the week that I used it. The Ray was also really quick to open up applications and multi-task. I ran a couple of benchmarking softwares to test the performance of the phone.

On Linpack, I achieved an average score of about 38.5 MFLOPS, while the Arc averages out at about 35 MFLOPS. The Quadrant score was a bit more disappointing at 1639 - really average considering the 2200+ scores many smartphones achieve.

Battery life on the Ray was one of the best I've seen on an Android phone so far. With average usage, I maxed out the battery after 38 hours, far more than the power hungry Samsung Galaxies and LG Optimuses. On a day when I spent long hours gaming and a few hours making calls, the phone lasted me a little more than 26 hours.

Call quality on the handset didn't disappoint, and most of the time I didn't even use maximum volume for calls.

Our verdict

Despite its rather average set of features, the Xperia Ray manages to impress because of quality. It runs Android Gingerbread, has a clear and responsive screen, great battery life, good camera and it is fast. To be honest, that ticks most of the boxes in my smartphone wishlist. Sony Ericsson's aggressive pricing strategy could be the clinching factor in making the Ray a great option for any Android lover.

Love: Overall good performance

Hate: Small screen size could be a turn off for some users

Rs 20,000

ketaki@thehindu.co.in

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