Introduction
Sony was the talk of town during CES 2012 back in January and the Xperia ion for AT&T was among the main reasons why. Launched alongside the Xperia S, the Sony Xperia ion took the great honor of being the company's first LTE smartphone. To make the matters even more epic, the smartphone marked Sony Mobile's grand return to the most lucrative segment of the US smartphone market - that of the high-end, tricked out handsets with spec sheets as long as a daily newspaper. In a nutshell, the Sony Xperia ion was a big deal anyway you looked at it.
Sony Xperia ion official photo
Arriving to the market six months after its announcement, the Sony Xperia ion has a different smartphone landscape to face. Samsung and HTC have already released their heavy hitters in the United States, packing better internals, and offering more up-to-date software experience. To put it mildly - arriving late to the party, the Sony Xperia ion now finds itself outgunned by the competition.
What makes this occurrence particularly frustrating is the fact that this wasn't the case at the smartphone's announcement six months ago. Back in January, the Xperia ion for AT&T could go have a go at any top-of-the-line Android smartphone on the market and emerge victorious.
To offset the massive delay, the Sony Xperia ion is priced quite aggressively. AT&T asks only $99.99 for the smartphone. Should you choose to pick one up directly from Sony though, you will only have to shell out $49.99 with a two-year contract. Cutting edge it might be not, but the Sony Xperia ion still offers you a lot of smartphone for the money. Here goes the list of its full talents.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
- Tri-band 3G with 21Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
- Category 3 LTE network connectivity
- 4.6" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen of 720p resolution (720 x 1280 pixels) with Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine; Scratch-resistant glass
- Dual-core 1.5 GHz Scorpion CPU, 1 GB RAM, Adreno 220 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260 chipset
- 12 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geo-tagging, Multi Angle shot
- 1080p video recording @ 30fps with continuous autofocus and stereo sound
- 1.3 MP front-facing camera, 720p video recording
- Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
- GPS with A-GPS
- 16GB built-in storage; microSD card slot
- microHDMI port, dedicated TV launcher
- microUSB port (charging); stereo Bluetooth v2.1
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- Voice dialing
- Adobe Flash 11 support
- Deep Facebook integration
- PlayStation Certified
- Accelerometer and proximity sensor
Main disadvantages
- Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread out of the box doesn't cut it for a high-end device this far into 2012
- Display has sub-par side viewing angles
- Underwhelming front touch buttons and side camera key
- Non-user replaceable battery
The biggest letdown about the Sony Xperia ion for AT&T is undoubtedly the lack of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box. Sony's customization of Android 2.3 Gingerbread is quite polished but still - it simply does not befit a mid-2012 high-end device. The battery life could have also been much better, given the handset's knack for multimedia.
Sony Xperia ion live photos
As always, we are going to kick things off with an unboxing of the Sony Xperia ion for AT&T, followed by a design and build quality inspection.
A retail box to match the price tag
Much like with the case of other $99 smartphones, the Sony Xperia ion for AT&T won't blow you away with its retail package. Inside the orange/white colored box, you will find a charger and a microUSB cable, along with the usual set of booklets.
Quite frankly, a set of headphones would have been much appreciated here, especially given Sony's own lineup of accessories. In the case of the AT&T flavored Xperia ion however, you will have to get one on your own dime.
Design and build quality
The Sony Xperia ion is a well-designed piece of hardware. The handset recently won a Red Dot award for its pleasantly understated looks. However, for every person who thinks that the Xperia ion is a looker, there's probably another who would brand the device as being dull. On our end, we can't help but note, that the transparent strip, found in the Xperia S would have added a welcome touch of character to the Xperia ion.Build quality is superb. The Sony Xperia ion for AT&T is a blend of high-quality plastic and metal, while the handset's screen is scratch proof - even the pickiest user will have a hard time finding something to frown about.
The measures of the Sony Xperia ion are fairly acceptable for a device with such a massive screen. They are 133 x 68 x 10.8 mm, while its weight tips the scale at 144 grams. The only negative worth noting here is the handset's thickness, which is far from great. In any case, the Xperia ion won't tear a hole in your pocket.
The 4.55" screen of the device is truly great. Backed by Sony's BRAVIA engine, the display is sharp, offers great color reproduction, and good contrast. Its pixel density of 323ppi is not as high as the 342ppi found in the Sony Xperia S's unit, but it's well on par with a the latest iPhone Retina screens offer.
The Xperia ion's display is gorgeous
There is a lot going on above the display. There, you will find the ambient light and proximity sensors, the earpiece, an indicator light, as well as the 1.3MP front-facing camera. Below the screen is where the four capacitive buttons for navigating Android reside. Their sensitivity is far from the greatest we've encountered.
The view above and below the screen
The microUSB and microHDMI ports are neatly located under a cover on the left side of the phone. There is nothing else to be found there.
The microUSB and microHDMI ports on the left
Things get busier on the right side as it is the home of the power/lock key, the volume rocker, as well as the dedicated button for the 12MP snapper.
The view on the right
On top of the device, you will find the lonely 3.5mm audio jack sitting at the center. There's nothing but a mouthpiece at the bottom of the Xperia ion.
Viewing the Xperia ion's top and button
The 12MP camera and its LED flash light are located on the back. The loudspeaker grille can be found immediately below them. The green logo and Xperia letters at the bottom hark back to the Sony Ericsson heritage.
The view on the back
The SIM card slot and the microSD card slot are stealthily tucked in under a small cover, located right above the camera sensor. Removing it takes place by pressing with your thumbs on its sides and sliding up.
The home of the microSD and the SIM card slots
The 1900mAh non-removable battery of the Sony Xperia ion for AT&T achieved an endurance rating of 31 hours in our traditional battery test. This means that you can expect the Xperia ion to last you just a bit over a full day, should you use it for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback every daily.
You can find out all about the battery performance of the handset in this post.
Handling the Sony Xperia ion is relatively easy for its size. Even one handed operation is possible on most occasions. The curved back allows the device to fit comfortably in hand, and reduces the risk of drops.
Handling the Sony Xperia ion is relatively easy
Overall, we'll give excellent marks for build quality of the Sony Xperia ion. Design on the other hand is strictly a matter of personal perception. Battery life could have been much better, but we are not surprised by the Xperia ion's showing on this instance - the combination of Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 with HD screen and LTE is a well recorded energy hog by now.
Following next is a look at the (ageing) software of the Sony Xperia ion.
Gingerbread for now
The Sony Xperia ion for AT&T, like the rest of the NXT series, runs Android Gingerbread 2.3.7 with an ICS update coming up later on. We've seen the same UI combo on the Xperia S, the sola, the Xperia P, and Xperia U, so we'll cut straight to the demo video.
The Sony Xperia ion UI
The homescreen does a neat trick called Overview mode. Pinch to zoom out on any of the 5 homescreen panes and a new screen opens up with a cool transition. All active widgets gather there for easy viewing and selection.
The Overview mode
The Xperia ion has some custom-made Sony widgets in addition to the standard set. Those include the Timescape widget (there's a dedicated app too) and a Mediascape-like widget for photos and videos (the actual app isn't there anymore, the standard gallery is back).
Widgets menu • Removing widget
The lockscreen shows notifications for Facebook events too. A cool new addition to the lockscreen, unseen in the old Xperia line, is the music player widget, which lets you control music playback without unlocking the phone - we'll get back to this further on.
The standard notification area and task switcher are of course present and accounted for - no custom touches to them.
The lockscreen • Lockscreen notifications • The standard notification area and task switcher
Color themes are also part of the Sony Xperia ion's user interface. There are several of them preinstalled.
Some of the preinstalled themes
Synthetic benchmarks
The Sony Xperia ion for AT&T is powered by a dual-core Scorpion CPU clocked at 1.5 GHz and 1GB of RAM. Back at the time of the smartphone's announcement, those were as good as it could possibly get. These days however, they are considered mid-range.We ran our usual round of benchmarks and compared the Xperia ion to a selection of popular upper-midrange competitors.
We'll start with Benchmark Pi, which measures the CPU computing power of the Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 chipset. The Xperia ion could have done much better here.
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