sony xperia l2
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Sony Xperia L2 Review

  MPC Team

Sony released one of the most economical and affordable smartphones in its history earlier this year. This is going to be the entry-level Sony Xperia L2, which will be basically following the familiar style and other design principles followed by its earlier flagship devices. This is also the phone that also definitely contains many new features, e.g. 120-degree wide-angle front camera and the fingerprint scanner.

Sony Xperia L2 was launched on 9th February 2018 and Xperia L2 price in Pakistan is PKR 26,200. This makes this phone a low-range device and quite below the shiny offerings such as Xperia XA2. Let us take a comprehensive look over the phone and see what it has got for us!

Design

Sony Xperia L2 will feature a normal Sony appearance, but there is going to be a twist in it. There will be a rectangular shape on its front, which will further have a softly rounded frame, and there will be a flap drawer for SIM slot as well as microSD cards on the sides. However, on the back it will be curved, which will let the user to keep the phone in palm smoothly. The phone is made of plastic, and the matte finish over it provides it a very convincing metal appearance. The thicker side bezels of this device show a sign of budget mobile. Still, we cannot consider it an ugly phone, as we still say it is fine and workable.

When it comes to hardware controls, we will have the plastic power button as well as volume keys on the right edge. These keys and the button appear to be quite nice, and you will not have excessive wobbles, where as the solid click will provide a good feedback from the button. On the rear side, we will have a fingerprint reader, which is arguably quite fast. The camera will not have any hardware button in this phone, which is actually featured in the upper-range Xperia phones. Moreover, in case of Xperia L2, the quick double-press on the power button will actually work as the shortcut press for the camera.

Display

sony-xperia-l2

Sony Xperia L2 will come with 5.5-inch display screen, which will have traditional 16:9 aspect ratio. The phone display will have the resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, and its pixel density will be 267ppi. This does not look good theoretically though, but we can say for Sony phone it will be fine.

We have often experienced many Xperia phones in the past in which the screens were not likeable, and Xperia L2 is also not going to be any exception. The color temperature of the phone was 8102K, where as the reference value was far from 6000. Moreover, the blur tint is also visible clearly in it. Luckily, the phone settings will have the option for RGB sliders, which will let you change the color balance of your own choice. Once tuned fine, we will have a display with the tame colors, which will look good to our eyes.

The brightness of the screen would arguably be low. The maximum brightness that we measured was 370 nits. So, it will be a tougher task for you to consume the media in such low brightness in the bright environment around you. However, you would still be able to view the content under sunlight for doing normal tasks, e.g. taking a photo or answering the phone call.

Interface and Functionality

It is well said that a Sony is always a Sony. It’s been so many years that we have not seen any change in the interface over a Sony smartphone. It has been built on the identical principles. Once again, there is going to be a light reskin of Android where there will not be any extreme number of additional features or even the background processes. There will be a couple new visuals as well as widgets, and there will also be signature apps by Sony.

Hence, apart from the stock apps by Android, we will be getting the Movie Creator app, which will let us select a few photos and clips and merge them to produce the highlights of a video for us. There is also a PlayStation app pre-installed which will sync with our console profile. There will also be the Xperia Lounge app, through which we will be getting offers, vouchers, app suggestions as well as a Theme Store.

Moreover, Sony Xperia L2 will come with Android Nougat 7.1.1 and not with Android 8.0 Oreo. It will hence be fully using the Google’s OS stock features. We will also be getting the split screen mode in it. Google Feed screen will also be visible on the left, and there will also be Google Assistant app. There will also be many app shortcuts, which will be presented when you tap and hold onto a particular app.

Hardware and Performance

Sony Xperia L2 has been powered by MediaTek 6737T SoC, which is quad-core and ticks at 1.5 GHz. The phone comes with 3GB of RAM and its hardware is quite fine. There was no issues in browsing or chatting through this phone. We did observe some choppiness in it when we were using the Snapchat lenses and when we were also caching the YouTube video at 60fps. However, this is totally fine especially with a low-range phone worth only around PKR 25,000.

As far as the gaming experience is concerned, it will totally depend on which game you essentially play. Sony Xperia L2 will be good for simple games such as Break Liner. We also were able to smoothly run a round-based fighter game with 3D models called Shadow Fight 3. Similarly, we then ran a game namely Rules of Survival, which is a massive online survival shooting game. The phone did prove itself to be of low-end nature here, as it dropped some frames here and appeared to be disadvantageous for gamer in this particular game.

So, out basic impression about Sony Xperia L2 is that it is definitely going to perform your basic tasks and will also entertain you as long you just remain in its limits. So, you must not expect it to be a high-end smartphone in the first place, as with normal games it will work smoothly without any flaws.

Similarly, Xperia L2 will come with built-in 32 GB internal storage, from which you will be getting 23GB for media and apps. MicroSD card will be available for those who want some extra gigs in it.

Camera

Sony Xperia L2 is going to feature a camera app, which will more be the barebones edition of other high-end Sony smartphones. Xperia L2 camera will have the signature Sony Intelligent Auto mode, Video mode and limited Manual mode. There will also be the object tracking mode and that too when you tap on the screen, which is a nice thing on the phone of this category.

The camera on Xperia L2 is going to be 13MP on rear, which will have 1.12μm pixels, and which will have F2.0 lens aperture. It will definitely do a good job for you vis-à-vis capturing details without much of the grain, which is an appreciable thing. Still, we would not be expecting any super-sharp imaging quality in it.

You will find the colors to be fairly accurate and balanced. The camera will however some issues in green shades. As a matter of fact, there will be noticeably narrower dynamic range, as you will certainly lose parts of a photo, which is either in overburned highlights or in case of the blacked-out shadows. In indoors, this will really be noticeable, but it might also be an issue in the outdoors. Moreover, do not simply any miracle in case of night-time photography.

The selfie camera is going to have 120-degree wide-angle lens, which will allow you to accommodate more stuff into your selfies. There will be only the normal mode, which will zoom into the middle of the image, which will also crop out the fisheye effect around the sides. Moreover, behind this lens, there will be 8MP sensor, which will do a good job in terms of details in regular as well as wide-angle models. The colors in this case will be a bit skewed, but do not expect anything dramatic in it. In this case, there will be an issue of overblowing highlights. However, as long as you put your face in the shade, you will be able to take many acceptable selfies.

Regarding the video capturing, there will be continuous focus, which will be helpful in recording the action scene. Still, keep in mind that you will not have stabilization on the clips, so you must not try to move it around much. You will get the maximum video quality to be 1080p at 30fps, which will still do a good job in case of Facebook clips at least.

Connectivity

Sony Xperia L2 will feature the USB Type-C port, which is often seen nicely on a low-end phone. Some companies have still been missing it out by placing the older Micro USB port, so Xperia L2 will be a bit modern in this regard. On cellular side, the phone has got LTE support, which will be providing different LTE bands, but there will not be any CDMA band support.

Multimedia

We have stated above that the display of this phone is going to be a bit weak as far as the brightness is concerned, as it is also not good in colors. So, it might blow your experience in case of watching clips and photos sometimes. We have also explored that on the other hand you will be getting an enjoyable experience, which will mainly depend on the media you view.

When it comes to the audio quality aspects, we see that there is single speaker on the bottom part of the phone, which also appears to be tiny. The speaker is good for alarms and ringtones. But it is not good for music and other media. Sony has however installed the software EQ on Xperia L2, which is a good thing, and that is because when you connect this phone with Bluetooth speakers or external headphones, then you get good quality for sure. Moreover, there will be FM radio in it, which is accessible even in case of the Ultra Stamina Mode.

Battery Life

Sony was known to be the battery life king back in 2014 when it gave massive battery capacity in Sony Xperia Z3 and Sony Xperia Z2. At that time, signature Stamina Mode was quite advanced, which helped putting the power-saving features on the phones very well before Android adopted them as its stock feature. These days, this Stamina Mode works in a very simple way, which is essentially not a good thing anyway. Sony has also added an additional level of power saving feature, which is known as Ultra Stamina. This feature basically helps in turning off different silent features and disable different apps, which will turn the Xperia L2 into a simple feature phone. However, the battery life due to it will be massively extended.

The battery life test performed by us showed that Xperia L2 will last for 7 hours and 50 minutes upon full charge. This did not turn out to be a good result anyway. However, this is something serviceable. You might get the battery life of about a day and half if you turn the Stamina Mode on. This is also in case of making it a modest phone in which there is no 3D gaming and only basic tasks are performed.

Conclusion

So, let us conclude the debate. What are you going to get for Rs. 26,000? First off, Sony Xperia L2 is going to be an economical and affordable choice for you to grab an Android phone, which will also meet all your basic needs. However, you might also face a few limitations and drawbacks. For example, Xperia L2 will have a larger display. Moreover, it also does not look good due to its mediocre display qualities and thick bezels. The performance is going to be solid when you are talking about everyday tasks from watching clips to connectivity. Come heavy gaming, it is going to be a challenge for Xperia L2 to handle. The fingerprint scanner is mounted on the back which works fast. The camera is also nice, but it is not the best anyway. On the whole, Sony Xperia L2 is going to perform better considering this much amount of money.

In comparison to Xperia L2, however, you might also get Motorola Moto G5S Plus, which will be priced at Rs. 31,000. However, the latter features metal body, powerful Snapdragon 625 SoC, higher battery capacity, LED flash-supported selfie camera, and powerful camera on the rear. So, it might also be a considerable choice for you.

That being said, if you are still seeking for phone that is essential an entry-level, either it is some other or Sony’s, then it seems that you are on the right track by opting for Sony Xperia L2. It would however be a good choice as long as the market does not have other competitors in next few months.

Care to know about MPC Rating for Sony Xperia L2? – It’s 7 out of 10!

 

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