Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro - Write Like a Pro

The Need for a QWERTY Android Smartphone

Sony Ericsson’s focused approach on the Android platform has seen a slew of smartphones powered by the Google mobile operating system. Over the course of 2011, its Xperia lineup has been steadily introduced, some with much fanfare like the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play and Xperia Arc, while others took on a low key approach. The latter approach is taken with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro, an Android 2.3 device equipped with a slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard.

Design

Considering that the Xperia Pro comes with a second layer to house the QWERTY keyboard, its thick 13.5mm profile is understandable, but it won’t be winning any design awards for that. The QWERTY keyboard, tucked beneath the Xperia Pro’s 3.7-inch display, doesn’t take too much effort to slide out. Incidentally, this will unlock the device, though its response time is relatively slower compared to swiping the screen and unlocking it.

Thanks in part to its 3.7-inch display, the keyboard has a much wider area to work with. One might think that the wider dimensions will give us a better typing experience, but that’s only partially true. Though the keys are well-spaced, there were some issues with fast and accurate typing due to the flushed nature of the keys. Its particularly stiff keys didn’t help with the typing experience. And when you think about how your keyboards are usually arranged in a trapezoid frame, the Xperia Pro’s choice of a rectangular frame for its keys did throw us off track. There were times when we felt that the onscreen keyboard might have done a better job. While it did turn out to be true, we’d still prefer to have a whole display available to view, instead of having a virtual keyboard occupying half the screen.

Similar to its thinner Xperia Arc or Arc S cousins, the Xperia Pro comes with three physical buttons located at the bottom of the screen. The buttons are admittedly situated too low on the front profile, which can get challenging when we try to access the said buttons whilst balancing the phone precariously. The back, home and menu buttons are much easier to click, as compared to the thin and flushed ones on the Xperia Arc and Arc S.

Its side profile houses the common shortcut buttons for features such as the camera, power and volume buttons. Unfortunately, these buttons have a relatively small surface area, making them hard to locate and click. This is especially frustrating for right-handers trying to put the phone to sleep. With the power button located on the left, we naturally used our right index finger on it. Unfortunately, the button is located on the upper half of the side profile; coupled with the small area to work with, there was much difficulty in hitting the button and putting the phone on standby. The same can be said for the camera button, which is situated far too low on the right profile for easy access, not to mention ease of use.

All things considered, the Xperia Pro isn’t half bad when we handled it. With its keyboard tucked away, we had a solid grip on the device, and its 3.7-inch screen was definitely easy on our eyes. Swiping through widgets and apps on the five home pages wasn’t too difficult, given that we did not have to stretch our thumbs to swipe the pages from edge-to-edge. More importantly, with an evenly distributed weight of 126g across the device, our arms weren’t too stressed out after an extended period of usage on the Xperia Pro.

Features

Likewise, the Xperia Pro comes with a few unique customizations to differentiate itself from the competition. Other than the exterior, the changes you’ll notice comes from its user interface. For one, there are more widgets than the ones found on a vanilla Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

A quick pinch on the screen will show you an overview of the widgets populating the five home pages. While the concept is similar to how HTC does it with HTC Sense and Samsung’s TouchWiz, Sony Ericsson has taken on a more cluttered approach, with the widgets being consolidated together in one page.

The folder concept isn’t new either, but Sony Ericsson takes it a step further. While you can customize four shortcuts for the commonly used apps, you can also drag and drop more apps into one of these four shortcuts, turning it into a folder. Each shortcut houses up to sixteen apps, but practically speaking, you are probably better off with just four apps in one folder since only the first four apps will be visible as thumbnails.

One of the more prominent customizations is found through its email app. Instead of a one-page interface, the Xperia Pro provides an additional pane that lists your emails, on top of the email that you’re currently reading. On the portrait orientation, this might not seem too useful, but once we switched it to landscape mode, the two pane approach made it much easier for us to read through our emails. A 3.7-inch will do nicely for this split-screen presentation, though we wouldn’t mind a larger screen, perhaps up to 4-inches or more, for this particular feature.

Performance

With a single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 1GHz processor powering the Xperia Pro, some might wonder if it performs as admirably as its competitors with a dual-core processor. To answer that, we took the Xperia Pro out for a spin, mostly concentrating on its apps loading, switching and handling speeds. In particular, we tested graphics intensive games such as Shadowgun to stress test its Adreno 205 GPU alongside the single-core processor, and the results weren’t too disappointing. Scrolling through the user interface was relatively smooth, while videos running on its native display resolution of 480 x 854 pixels had no foreseeable frames skipping or lagging.

To give you a more tangible gauge at its performance, we subjected the Xperia Pro to an Android-specific benchmark, Quadrant. This particular app tests the CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performance of a mobile device, giving you a general idea of how the device performs.

These benchmarks are not definitive, but it will give you a rough estimate on how the Xperia Pro stands against similar smartphones. For the purpose of comparison, we pitted the Sony Ericsson device against a very similar single-core smartphone, the Motorola Milestone 2. The HTC Sensation XL with its higher clock speed on a single-core processor and the leading dual-core smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S II, are tossed in to highlight the potential differences.

Looking at the scores from the Quadrant benchmark, it’s safe to say that the single-core Xperia Pro fails to match the raw processing power of its dual-core competitor. The bumped up 1.5GHz clock speed on the Sensation XL proved advantageous, given that it scored higher than the Xperia Pro by a few hundred points.

Similar to its recent Xperia cousins, the Xperia Pro comes with the Mobile Bravia Display enhancement. To be honest, we don’t see much of a difference with and without Mobile Bravia Display activated. For a 3.7-inch display and a screen resolution of 480 x 854 pixels, the high pixels-per-inch density should give you a sharper image on the display. As explained earlier on, we had no issues with the video playback on the Xperia Pro. Its audio performance didn’t fail to disappoint. However, like most mobile devices, you won’t be relying on its speakers for the best audio quality.

On paper, the Xperia Pro has some amazing specifications for its camera. An 8-megapixel imaging resolution is nothing to shout about, but Sony Ericsson’s liberal use of its Exmor sensor for its recent Xperia range has given us something to look forward to. Taking all that into consideration, we conducted our usual tests to check on its overall imaging performance.

The results were expectedly pleasant for us, with minimal noise seen across the images. Color reproduction was nicely done, and we liked how the white balance kept the image neither too warm nor cool. While the details weren’t as sharp in the finer areas, we were quite impressed with how the overall imaging quality was a notch above the rest.

Lastly, we examine the Xperia Pro’s stamina, using the same devices as a point of comparison. Besides having its processor as a factor to consider, we are also looking at how the different screen sizes and battery capacity will affect each of their battery performance. Our testing methodology involves testing a video with a 480 x 800 pixels resolution looping under the following conditions:

• Screen brightness and volume at 100%
  
   
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections active
  
   
• Constant data stream via email and Twitter

The battery life is also tied closely to the portability index of the device, which is calculated as such:

Portability Index = Ratio of Battery Life to (Weight x Volume)

In this equation, a higher portability index is preferred, given that it is a reflection of a device that lasts longer, minus the bulk and weight of a huge battery housed in a large form factor.

From the charts, it’s clear that the Xperia Pro fared quite well with its 351 minutes timing. Attributing it to a less power hungry single-core processor is only one part of the equation. The Sensation XL’s huge 4.7-inch display, plus its higher 1.5GHz processor clock speed, showcased two of the most power draining aspects of a smartphone. The Motorola Milestone 2, with similar specifications (and design), was shy of the Xperia Pro’s numbers by 30 minutes.

While the single-core processor on the Xperia Pro sustained itself quite well, its dual-core competitors gave a similar performance. The Samsung Galaxy S II managed to steal the thunder in this comparison. Even with its larger display size of 4.26-inches, we have to give due credit to its Super AMOLED Plus display for its above average battery life. From the portability aspect, the Xperia Pro’s bulk and weight against the Samsung Galaxy S II won’t put it at the top of the list, but that’s the price you’ll have to pay for the QWERTY keyboard.

Do note that the test conducted is meant to stress the battery to the limit. At the end of the day, the mileage you get out of the Xperia Pro depends on your usage pattern. Like most smartphones, the Xperia Pro definitely lasts for at least a full working day, with emails and Twitter feeds pushed constantly to it. The occasional music and video playback and a decent amount of talktime of no more than 30 minutes in total were included in the mileage.

Conclusion

The thing about Android, is how manufacturers like Sony Ericsson can go full steam ahead with customizations. And that holds true for the Xperia Pro. Besides the usual Sony Ericsson user interface customization, the most identifiable being the Timescape widget, we also saw the use of a split-pane design for its email app. Though it isn’t the first to implement a folder-for-apps concept, it’s good to see that the option exists to house more app shortcuts on the home page.

Admittedly, the Xperia Pro is no head-turner with its thick profile. Its QWERTY keyboard did not do any favors for us with its less than optimal typing experience. The irregular placement of its power and camera buttons, coupled with how flushed the said buttons are to the body, are the most likely deal breakers. But if you are able to live with the awkward camera button, you’ll find its 8-megapixel camera returning decent images thanks to its Exmor sensor. Its 3.7-inch display is a good fit for swiping, and when it comes to watching videos on the unit, it doesn’t fare too badly either, with or without its Mobile Bravia Display activated. Battery stamina isn’t a huge concern, given that our battery tests gave a score of 351 minutes of continuous video playback and the usual one-day running time for usual smartphone activities.

Priced at S$638, we won’t say the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro is a must-have item for QWERTY keyboard users. Other QWERTY smartphones such as the BlackBerry Bold 9900 will fare better in the typing department. But if you’re looking for something more, such as a sufficiently strong app ecosystem to go along with the smartphone, you might want to consider this Sony Ericsson device or the Motorola Milestone 2.

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