Sony has been quite stagnant in terms of mobile division and same is the case with their designs. No doubt, all devices look similar be it XA, X or XZ series and to top it off another device has been added to their array. The XA1 Plus was unveiled during the IFA in Berlin and now it has made way to India. Before the XA1 Plus, the Ultra was launched for a much higher price tag and a larger screen. The XA1 Plus falls in between the Ultra and the regular XA1.
Specifications:
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| Sony Xperia XA1 Plus |
Specifications:
- 5.5 inch FHD (1920×1080) IPS LCD display with Corning Gorilla Glass protection.
- Mediatek Helio P20 SOC with 4 cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.3gHz and remaining 4 at 1.6gHz
- Mali T880 GPU
- 3/4 GB RAM 32GB storage expandable upto 256GB via SD card
- 23MP rear camera of EXMOR RS sensor with f/2.0 lens and Hybrid autofocus with EIS.
- 8MP f/2.0 lens with 1/4" sensor size
- 3430mAh battery with Qnovo adaptive charging
- WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC , GPS
- USB type-C Port and 3.5mm audio jack
- 8.7mm thick and weighs 190g
The XA1 Plus comes with the regular top and bottom bezels and the 5.5 inch display adds up to making single handed usage more inconvenient. The device comes with a metal unibody design and is quite thick at 8.7 mm. The bezels towards the sides are minimal and overall, the device has an ergonomic feel. The fingerprint sensor is located on the power ON/OFF button which indeed is a unique and in my opinion a genius placement. There is also a dedicated camera button which indicates its camera centric nature. The USB type-C Port is located at the bottom and the headphone jack is located at the top.
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| Fingerprint sensor on the power button |
Speaking of camera it comes with 23 MP packed in an Exmor RS sensor with f/2.0 aperture. The ISO levels can go upto ISO6400 with the rear camera. It comes with EIS and Hybrid autofocus. The higher ISO levels are meant for low light photography however, due to the smaller inlet for light, the images will turn grainy.
The front facing camera is of 8MP and has f/2.0 aperture with 1/4" lens.
The Helio P20 from Mediatek has never been able to obtain a balanced performance since it does come with its heating and optimisation issues. Heavier tasks and demanding graphics like gaming do suffer with this SOC in almost every other device that it powers and the same can be expected here. The P series competes with the Snapdragon 600 series and in my opinion for the price that it retails, a Snapdragon 625/630 would have been better. Although, in the end the way Sony has optimized the device will be the deciding factor in real world usage.
On the software front, it comes with Android 7 Nougat out of the box with Sony's own 'Vintage' UI since they never revamped it.
The battery capacity is of 3430mAh which is higher than most offerings. This battery capacity is coupled with 12W fast charger. Sony has also included Qnovo adaptive charging which is mainly focussed on improving battery health by variations in the charging conditions therby claiming improvement upto 2X times than the others.
Summing it up, the Sony Xperia XA1 Plus retails for Rs. 24,990 and is available in 4GB RAM and 32GB storage variant in India. The colour options include gold, black and blue. It competes directly with Samsung C7 Pro which offers better performance and also the Huawei Honor 8 Pro which is a complete package. The OnePlus 3T also falls near for purely performance oriented users and hence, among these options probably the XA1 Plus has no strong point to convince anyone to buy keeping aside the Xperia Fanboys.
Images via official website
Images via official website