Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray - A Small Glimpse of Light

A Ray of Light

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray stands out in a crowd of gargantuan smartphones like a ray of hope for those who want unrivaled hardware performance and yet, appreciate the form factor of feature phones. Most importantly, the Xperia Ray has all the ingredients that made the Arc attractive - an 8.1-megapixel camera, a display powered by the Mobile Bravia engine, Google's latest Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS, and a single-core 1GHz processor.

The only difference is that all these positive attributes are crammed into a tiny, stylish and handy body. So how's the Ray like exactly? We covered the design philosophy behind the Xperia Ray extensively while we were in Tokyo quite a while back, but to give readers a gist of what's going on in this teeny phone, do read on for our further observations.

 

The Xperia Ray is nothing short of a beauty. Chic, thin and minimalist in design, the phone sets out to attract customers who are looking to make the transition from feature phones to smartphones - not to mention it has a strong appeal to those of the fairer sex. Clearly, its form factor is also made with the intention for single-handed usage. As compact as it may be, the elongated phone gives it an odd proportion that makes it a tad too small for our liking. Nonetheless, it boasts of a solid and sturdy aluminum/plastic chassis. To top it off, the Ray spots a clear black glass front when it is switched off or on standby.

Features

The UI on the Xperia Ray follows what we've seen on the earlier Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, retaining a simple and streamlined navigational system with five home screens that give users easy access to frequently-used apps. While Sony Ericsson has previously featured the smart four-corner UI on the Xperia mini series to increase user accessibility, this isn’t available on the small Xperia Ray. Instead, the phone gets a nifty widget that facilitates easy one-touch calling on its minute screen.

Benchmarking the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray

We have adopted a few benchmark tests specific to the Android platform for a few reasons. With the Google Android platform maturing so quickly, choosing a suitable phone in a growing sea of Android devices with close to identical specs is extremely difficult. In addition, with manufacturers jumping on the dual-core processing bandwagon, these results will give a gauge of how they will fare against their lesser-endowed counterparts. Also, should a phone not perform favorably in our usage experience, these results would also help add a valuable dimension to further back up why it didn't meet expectations. Hopefully, these benchmarks will allow for a clearer picture on which smartphone is worth your while.

Within this page, we'll be looking at two specific benchmarks, both of which are downloadable via the Android Market.

• Quadrant: It measures the device's performance based on its CPU, I/O and GPU. Simply put, Quadrant is a benchmark that gives you a general idea of how your device performs against other Android devices.
  
   
• NeoCore: It is targeted towards the device's GPU performance. This is especially important given how smartphones of today have evolved into alternative, high-powered devices that dabble in heavy graphical interfaces and gaming.

Do note that the above two benchmarks are not absolute in measuring performance, but they give you a good rough estimate of how the device performs. Our tests were conducted on devices from a fresh reboot on a stock firmware. To show how the Xperia Ray performed against the competition, we compare its results against the following high-end Android devices - the HTC Sensation, Samsung Galaxy S II and its bigger brother, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc.

If you look at the Quadrant benchmark scores, the Xperia Ray and Arc are head-to-head in terms of scores. Looking at the comparison chart for the phones' specifications, you will see that they both share key identical hardware specs, which explains the similar scores we got from Quadrant.

To give you a good gauge of how the Ray's score compare to the dual-core smartphones, we have also included the latest two smartphones from that particular category. As you can see, the Ray and Arc lag pretty significantly behind the HTC Sensation and the Samsung Galaxy S II, with the Samsung smartphone's score doubling that of the two Xperia phones.

However, when it comes to the NeoCore scores, all four devices gave remarkably similar scores, though the Xperia Ray tops the cohort. With an FPS score of 62.6, the device achieved slightly better scores than the Samsung Galaxy S II and HTC Sensation. Taking into consideration the margin of benchmark error, we think it's safe to say that the Xperia Ray is powerful enough to handle 3D graphical games smoothly, much like its dual-core peers.

The Xperia Ray, like its Arc cousin, is fleet-footed and lag-free even as we navigated through the phone. Speedy screen transitions and apps were the norm, and multi-tasking with several apps in the background did not put a damper on its performance. During the testing period, we experienced no crashes. While its 512MB RAM pales in comparison to the Galaxy S II's 1GB or the HTC Sensation's 768MB offering, it certainly did the job for us. All in all, you will get a responsive phone with enough horsepower for fluid multi-tasking.

Multimedia & Battery

While users might prefer a bigger screen for their mobile entertainment needs, the Ray isn’t all that disadvantageous for multimedia purposes. Like the Arc and the new Mini series, the mobile device is packed with the Mobile Bravia Engine to enhance its display. Because of its high 854 x 480-pixel screen, images and videos appeared extremely crisp and sharp. With its 3.3-inch display, you can expect a high pixels-per-inch density on the Ray, bringing sharper and finer details to your images and videos. Coupled with a reasonable 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM, the phone ran speedily without any incident, even while running several apps and games in the background. 

Like its bigger cousin, the Xperia Arc, the Xperia Ray comes with an 8.1-megapixel (using a backlit Exmor R sensor) camera with autofocus. We were impressed the imaging experience - auto-focus was extremely speedy; colors were accurate and nicely-saturated. We noticed our night shots have relatively high levels of noise, but it isn’t a big deterrent from a purchase. The main drawback here is that in a bid to keep the phone as minimalist as possible, there's no physical camera shortcut button.

Battery Life

Our final performance benchmark is our regular battery test. This consists of comparing the smartphone to a select group of devices chosen based on their similarities across battery capacities, display sizes, resolutions and processing power. 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

We have decided to compare the phone based on primarily two sets of attributes: processing power and screen size. The first group includes devices that come with similar screen proportions to check on the Ray's performance with a smaller screen. The Ray is also compared against its bigger cousin once more, with the same dual-core smartphones lined up to see if the single-core device has a distinct advantage over the faster devices in battery mileage. The devices in question include the BlackBerry Torch 9810, BlackBerry Bold 9900, HTC Sensation, Samsung Galaxy S II and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc.

Compared to the two BlackBerry handsets, the Xperia Ray's battery life seemed to fare relatively worse. Out of the lot, the BlackBerry Torch's screen size of 3.2 inches is the closest to Ray's 3.3 inches. While it's unfair to compare them based on screen size alone (and not to consider other factors like operating systems, pixel count and additional screen enhancements like Mobile Bravia Engine), the numbers give a rough gauge of what consumers should expect in terms of battery life from phones with smaller touchscreens. We wouldn't say that the Xperia Ray fared badly here, but we were definitely expecting better results.



We were relatively disappointed when it came down to comparing the Xperia Ray's battery life to the Arc's. Since both phones house similar hardware and identical battery capacities, we were expecting the Ray to outlast its bigger cousin due to its smaller screen. But the Ray didn't and fell short of meeting the Arc's result of 338 minutes in our tests. Due to the phone's slim dimensions and lightweight body (it is the lightest of the bunch at 100g), it scores quite well in our portability index, landing in second place just below the Samsung Galaxy S II. Its small and compact build compensate for its average battery performance, so this is evidently where its strengths are. 



All in all, the Xperia Ray straddles the middle ground in terms of battery life; it isn't fantastic but neither is it terrible. Notably, while rationing the phone for normal day-to-day operations, the phone could last for at least a full day.

Light and Fleet of Foot

From the get-go, the Ray is clearly catered to those looking for a powerful phone like the Arc or Arc S but dislike their bulk. However, by keeping it small, compact and accessible to a niche crowd has compromised certain additions to the phone that we might like to see - such as a camera shortcut button or an HDMI port.

Nonetheless, our experience on the phone had largely been a positive one - speedy browsing, receptive touchscreen, bright display and good imaging quality with fast auto-focus capabilities. The only disappointment we had with the phone was its average battery performance. Considering the fact that it uses a 1500mAh with a smaller 3.3-inch display, we expected a longer mileage out of it, compared to its larger cousin, the Xperia Arc.

All things considered, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray comes with a strong proposition, thanks to its decent suite of hardware components and the latest Google Android 2.3 OS with Sony Ericsson's take on its user interface. At S$598, the Xperia Ray is a value-for-money smartphone that smoothly balances form and function. If you like the Ray but prefer a bigger screen and don't mind the extra cost, the Sony Ericsson Arc or the Arc S will be the closest alternatives.

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