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Great phone at a great price.
Sony Xperia Black XA $239.20 @ The Good Guys eBay
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What so cool about this phone?
720p screen, 16GB storage, 2GB ram.
unlocked, aust stock and cheap price.
The word "Xperia".
Yeah, I don't get it. Screen resolution very 2013. Performance quite mediocre, and reviews are not very good.
I'd rather have a decent quality high-performance Chinese phone at this price.This actually managed slightly higher on screen framerates in Manhattan 3.0 and 3.1 than the popular s650 powered note 3. So performance seems quite comparable to the Xiaomi phones. Though I guess you would Compare with the Redmi 4, since this is 5 inch model.
Compare benchmarks here:
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_xa-review-1454p5.php
http://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_note_3_snapdragon-revie…
I suppose someone would choose the Sony over Chinese model because:
- Local 2 year warranty
- Less effort for user (cones with Google Play, no vendor ROMs)
- Band 28 support
- NFC
I can see how a phone like this could be popular to a lot of people.
also… sony isnt sending data back to china
if you use your phone on banking and other sensitive issues then i'd be hard pressed to do it on a china phone
That's just one point of performance comparison. The Antutu benchmark score of a Xiaomi Note 3 Pro is 1.5x as high.
You can buy Note 3's with clean global ROM's which support OTA, and the "special edition" has band 28.
True, you don't get NFC, but I have never needed it. Nor have I ever needed warranty on any phone I owned.As for less effort: Sony ROM's can be a major pain. I'm talking major battery drain after update, and constant camera crashes on all models. Sony did not want to know and did not want to fix. I owned a Z1 and had to unlock the bootloader and use the Sony Emma tool to be able to revert to a stable(-ish) ROM, because my phone had become unusable. But this permanently broke further OTA updates, so I had to do it again later. Not exactly simple.
Your needs aren't the same as everybody elses. Everybody has their own wants, just like I have my own needs and wants.. I love nfc now because I use tap to pay all the time for instance. I personally couldn't care about band 28, wouldn't be so fussed about warranty or needing to flash roms. But that's me, someone like my Aunt would be up s**T creek without a paddle if you were to give her a Xiaomi phone stuck with a Chinese or bad vendor Rom. And her needs aren't that great when it comes to performance, typical social media apps that run pretty well on all phones now, so perhaps for her a phone like the Sony one here is better suited.
Yeah Antutu is a fun little benchmark to run on devices, doesn't mean much in general day to day performance though. Just because something like my Nexus 9 scores over 105k on that benchmark, doesn't mean it translates to a huge performance difference in general use over another device scoring say 25k. Doesn't mean my nexus 9 is over 4 times faster. The 3d benchmark is the same, it only gives you an idea of how the device will handle games. But I think claiming that this device performance is mediocre is just being too harsh…
Sure something like the Note 3 Pro may perform slightly better over this phone in general use, might open an app like facebook a second or two faster over a phone like this, and the other typical apps that most people use. I doubt this phone performance is that poor (based on my experience using phones with far inferior specs, such as the Telstra Buzz). Most people probably wouldn't notice the performance difference, unless they have both phones side by side like in those silly speed test videos on youtube, or if they play a lot of long loading mobile games. Even then, my snapdragon 410 powered device isn't that much slower at loading a game like Lara Croft Relic run (30 seconds vs 45 seconds) vs a Snapdragon 820 device with ufs 2.0 storage. People make a big deal about specs and performance, when the flagships phones are barely any faster at performing every day tasks. Most people just use apps like facebook.
I'm sure if you perform the same search with Xiaomi instead you'll find plenty of complaints about those phones too. You are comparing oranges to … at the end of the day. The difference here one will be covered by local 2 year warranty, the other one will be hard to get fixed if any issues arises. Maybe they'll never arise, you never know. Xiaomi will be harder to get any after sales support also. Some people are willing to pay a little extra for this peace of mind. The Xiaomi will most likely ship with a vendor rom (I wouldn't trust any vendor) and will need flashing to the official rom to receive ota updates, remove any malware and adware. This requires effort on the end user unfortunately most users don't want to put in this effort. This is why it hard to recommend Xiaomi to many people.
@tonyjzx: lol really mus have some serious stuff to hide if your worried about chinease thousands of miles away finding out lol
this is typical of a 'fashion' phone, it looks slick and sexy and thin but it's specs and battery life are mediocre. It's not targeted at the power user, more for somebody with basic needs.
I agree, it's a basic user phone, but that is what you find at this price. So I don't know what your point is? The popular moto g4 play at this price point only uses a snapdragon 410 for instance. Maybe your expectations are too high?
No idea why someone would neg you for pointing it out, so upvoting your comment :)
Thanks!
Bought one from Harvey Norman 4 weeks ago $199 with price match and Amex cash back.
I read many negative user comments around but so far I'm loving it, decided against getting the Xiaomi during 11.11 sales because I wanted NFC and local warranty. Love narrow width for 5" screen, screen look comparable to my brother Z5, just not as colour pop, responsive to day to day tasks(phone call, Facebook, banking, email, etc,,, and occasion solitaire). No issue with battery, wish volume is louder and dual sim available locally. Great phone at$299, bargain at $239.20.Was it an impulse buy ?
Yes it was, and I decided to keep :), and bought one for my mother too. It will pay for itself overtime with all the Amex android pay offers around.
Seems there is no cure for your humour ;p
It looks ok for the price. Given Sony only put 720p screen it should help with battery and performance. 2gb of ram is more than adequate when you have less pixels to push around. What do people expect from a $250 phone? All phones at this price point have compromises.
People have seen spoilt by sub $200 FHD china phones with questionable warranty, future support and security.
People expect a brand name phone that is 15% more expensive to match specs line for line AND to have all the Sony qualities.
The warranty is far worse then questionable. I had a xiaomi redmi 3 and the focus stopped working and tried banggood and xiaomi for warranty and they didnt care at all. The phone also came loaded with malware too, I would much rather pay 15% more for a warranty and a phone with no malware.
As the owner of an experia z who had to contact Sony support can I just say Sony support is top notch. I'll be updating to another Sony when I do, they impressed me that much.
all phones except the Oppo F1f and F1s - these still manage to put 3gb ram in and are under $300
but @ this price $239 the XA is a good choice and I agree that you can't complain given the phone's price.
I think people have been too spoilt by Android flagships having 4gb+ ram…. iphones are still using 2gb ram, I just wish Android could optimize ram usagage like IOS could, but still
given the price this is reasonable, however the oppo F1f for $199 (locked to optus) was still the best bang for buck… still haven't found anything to beat it yet and this was like 6 months ago
It's a great budget phone and handles daily task well. However, I am having a lot of battery issues despite the recent update where Sony claims it should fix any battery drains. I test battery life in idle only where the only thing running are Wifi and data (both on, one on only or both off) But so far it's been a while. I lose any where from 60-80% battery over a 10 hour idle period of no usage apart from checking the battery percentage.
Currently having a dispute with Harvey Norman and they claim they need to do more "test". They claim no issues found but I caught out their lies by checking the battery charge only being disconnected from the powerpoint when I arrived at the store (5pm) rather than 1pm which they have claimed. Sadly they refused to supply any paper work to state this… I went to another HN and they're much nicer so hopefully they'll acknowledge this battery issue and just give me either a replacement or a refund. Otherwise ACCC will be involved.
I hope no one else has to face this issue but I feel this needs to be told!
Just a rant from a budget uni student :(
Have you factory reset since the update to see if that solves the issue? Of course, this would wipe all your data but you seem prepared to swap/refund the phone anyway.
Okay so an update***
Before I posted this I have factory reset the phone twice and nothing changed. I did another 2 reset since this post and the battery has improved. I lose 5% of battery on idle with on wifi on per hour, so hypothetically it should last 20hours. Still doesn't meet the claim of up to 48 hours Sony claims. Yes it still says "up to" but this is just on stand by, I have yet to use it fully e.g. sms, FB, email, calls, reading the news but heavier use would only drain it faster as one expects.
I'm going to speak to HN again and see what they say or can do… not hopeful as their customer service team are below average in my experience to date.
Good luck. I have commented above about the great experience I had with Sony ROM's. Sony's support is abysmal.
I went to speak to another technician and he saw all my daily logs and screenshots of battery drain (battery usage setting) and was literally pissing himself at how bad the battery was, and how quickly it was draining when I was talking to him about my issue. Probably because HN charges 499 for a phone that's worth 299 and no one purchased from them (they priced matched it when I went because I couldn't be bothered going to another store).
Eventually got the refund because it was ridiculous.
I had a Sony Xperia Z1 for over 2 years and no issues with it. Gave it to my parents and the battery is lasting them around 2-3 days on average usage such as FB, calls, sms - seems like Sony phones are a mixed bags of bean boozled.
@pippohippo: My Z1 became completely stable when I used the Sony tool to flash the latest available ROM (a 5.1.1 based one). It was fast and the battery lasted. But I should not have had to go through all that trouble. Yes, mixed bag. My wife had a Z1, and did not get battery issues.
I did get the camera crash maybe like 5 times over 2 years but restarted it and fixed the issue. Not too sure if I should get the Z5 premium from Virgin Mobile. $50 plan per month contract with 4gbs data (enough for me). Currently on a $40 sim only with 10gb data and no contract..
@pippohippo: It has a nice 4k screen, but personally I can hardly tell the difference. It has the Snapdragon 810, which is definitely previous-gen tech by now. I would not buy a new expensive phone based on an SOC that has been around for as long as that.
"You can reap the benefits of a new phone thanks to this Sony mobile phone."
Oh cool!