Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo hands on

The Gadget Show  Wednesday 20 July 2011

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo is one of the latest Android smartphones, undercutting high-end handsets like the Xperia Arc or Samsung Galaxy S II. It also has a smaller screen – at 3.7 inches – which should suit those looking for a slightly smaller phone. Read on to find out whether it matches the Arc in terms of features and performance.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo is quite a bit cheaper than the Arc from some retailers, but shop around and they can be quite similar in price. The Neo lacks the wow-factor of the Arc – it’s thicker, and has a pretty standard design.

This also works in its favour, however. It’s more comfortable to hold, with curved edges, and it’s still nowhere near a heavyweight. Only the easily scuffed plastics let the design down, and it feels cheaper to hold than the Galaxy S II or iPhone 4.

The 3.7-inch screen is excellent, and if you don’t need the biggest possible display, it’s one of the Neo’s selling point. Colours aren’t quite as vibrant as on the latest Samsung smartphones, but it’s bright and easy to view in sunny conditions, and the 480×854-pixel resolution results in one of the sharpest screens currently on sale.

The Xperia Neo runs the latest Gingerbread version of Android, and it’s excellent. We found the Neo incredibly stable, with no need to restart, wait for programs or sort out any issues during several weeks of constant use.

Unlike Galaxy S phones, the Xperia Neo does without a heavy user interface, so what you see is mostly just Android. It’s all the better for it, at least in our opinion, proving intuitive, fast (the Neo has a 1GHz processor) and easy to customise.

Sony Ericsson has also included its own Timescape widget, integrating messages, notifications and Facebook updates together, but it’s messy, takes up nearly all of one home page, and is worth avoiding.

Features on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo are also impressive. The 8-megapixel camera is one of the better phone cameras we’ve seen, and although it can’t match the Nokia N8, it’s still worth having. The autofocus is quick and easy to use, there’s a dedicated shutter button and we found image quality was very good in all but darker conditions. Although there’s a flash, images taken at night still suffer from noise – one of the side effects of lots of megapixels crammed onto a relatively small sensor.

There’s no integrated storage on the Xperia Neo – so instead you’ll have to store apps, music and photos on the bundled 8GB microSD card. We didn’t find this to be an issue – either in terms of lag or running out of storage space, and it’s always possible to slot in a higher capacity card if you do want to store more files.

Overall, we’re really impressed with the Xperia Neo. Sure, it’s not going to win fans in the same way as the Xperia Arc or Xperia Play, but it’s comfortable, fast, well equipped and reasonably good value for money. If you want a phone with a sub 4-inch screen, the Neo is well worth a look.