The Music Unlimited app is a bit of a faff too. That's actually more than it costs on DVD, to have it on a phone with a tiny screen. Both seem to work fine, but a movie - I Am Number Four - costs £12 to buy, in standard definition. There are apps for Sony's streaming and download service for both music and movies. And to be honest, as with all Sony's ventures, it's here things go a little lame. The Xperia Ray, like other Sony Ericsson handsets comes with a few nods to its coporate overlords. But, we were pretty happy with the amount of time the Xperia could keep going for. We could tweak the backlight a little, or cut down on web browsing, or other applications that use background data. With over an hour of phone calls, we still got around 14 hours or so from the phone. It's fine though, and it's arguably more pleasant to use than the TouchWiz interface on Samsung phones. The app "tray" itself is similar to the iPhone, in that it's a left to right scroll, rather than the standard Android up/down scroll. This saves space, and works very elegantly. It's clever, because each button can expand to show more apps. We stuck with the Sony "launcher" - as it's known - and actually found it a pleasure to use.Īs part of this, there is a quick launch bar at the bottom of the screen. For the first time in donkeys years, we actually didn't feel the need to disable the customisations. This makes the phone more user-friendly, and gives a more personalised look. Like the keyboard, the Ray has a Sony user interface skin, which the company has wrapped around the Android operating system. We use an app called keyboard from Android 2.3 which is a port from the stock, you guessed it, Gingerbread build of Android.Īnyway, none of this is a deal breaker, and virtual keyboards are replaceable, as long as you know that, you should never have to suffer a bad one again. It's not unusable, by any stretch of the imagination, but we think any user would be far better off using Swiftkey, Swype or any other keyboard replacement from the Android market. Compare it with most Android handsets, and it will immediately stand-out from the other devices. It's actually very impressive when you take your first look at it. It shows too, because the Sony Ericsson has one of the crispest, most detailed screens we've seen. That's just 29ppi fewer than the iPhone 4 with its Retina display. Indeed, the Xperia Ray has a 297ppi display, thanks to 854 x 480 pixel squished into a 3.3-inch unit. In practice though, and like Ericsson phones of old, the fact that the screen has such a high resolution means that you never really notice that it's physically smaller. We're used to smartphones with massive screens, and the Ray has a pretty tiny one. The thing we were most worried about, after the ridge on the screen, was the display size. We needn't have worried though, we never noticed it when we actually started using the phone. This was a worry, because we thouhgt we'd catch our fingers on it, and enjoy a less than fluid touchscreen experience. The only real design flaw we could find, early on, was that the screen is slightly raised, and not flush with the case. The home key can also be used to wake the phone up, as can the power button, which is located at the top of the handset, next to the headphone jack. For normal use though, it just glows with a standard backlight blue/white colour. The home key is surrounded by a notification light too, that glows green or red, to keep you updated as to what the phone status is. This layout breaks a little from the standard Android form, but we like it, and it works well. The third is a hardware home key, which is located between the other two controls. Two are soft-keys for back and the context sensitive menu control. There are three buttons on the front surface. We liked this, it's a bit different and the phone is incredibly good-looking as a result. That's a good thing though, and Sony Ericsson has really thought about its audience and has designed the phone to appeal to those people.įor example, there are several colours available, from a bog-standard black, to a tasty champagne sort of shade, which is the colour we got as a review sample. While we don't want to pigeon-hole anyone, it's clear that the Xperia Ray will appeal to users who are new to smartphones. Those were amazing phones, which were class leaders when they were on sale more than 10 years ago. Older readers might remember the likes of the T10 and T28. It's tough, well-built and reminds us of the golden age of Ericsson phones. But what is attractive about the Ray is its ability to slip into a pocket and be forgotten about.
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