MWC 2014 - Sony Xperia M2 Hands on Review and comparison with Xperia M

Sony Xperia M2 is the successor of Sony’s most popular mid-range smartphone Sony Xperia M. The Sony Xperia M launched last year in June. The smartphone was the best mid-range device until Moto G launched. It has premium smartphones features like NFC and other premium apps from Sony that was only available in premium devices of Sony. Now at Mobile World Congress 2014, Sony launched the bumped up version of Sony Xperia M with a better processor, camera and screen size. The smartphone looks very good, it’s much larger now with 4.8-inch display and there is an 8-megapixel camera at back and there is a front facing VGA camera as well. There are three touch capacitive buttons on display same as Sony Xperia M. on top there is a 3.5mm audio jack. There is a micro USB port on the side. And there is standard metallic finish power button on the side as well. This time with Xperia M2 Sony has made flaps to cover SIM card slot as well as memory card slot. Speaker mesh is at the bottom of the smartphone.

Talking about the specifications and design of Sony Xperia M2 it is slightly slimmer than its predecessor. Sony Xperia M was 9.6mm thin while the new Xperia M2 is only 8.6mm thin. So Xperia M2 is thinner than its predecessor. But surprisingly new M2 is a little bit heavier than Xperia M. Sony Xperia M was only 115 gram in weight while Xperia M2 is 148 grams in weight. But Xperia M2 feels more robust and premium while holding in hand rather than Xperia M.

The Screen is bumped up from 4-inch to 4.8-inch in Xperia M2, and the pixel resolution is also bumped-up from 800×480pixels to 960×540pixels as compared to Xperia M. The display looks sharper, brighter and crisper than before while watching videos and playing games.

The Xperia M dual was launched with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system while the single SIM version of Xperia M was launched with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system. But now Sony is launching the successor Xperia M2 with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system.

The Xperia M was launched with a Dual core processor along with 1GB RAM. The new Xperia M2 is launched with a 1.2GHz quad core processor, 1GB RAM and Adreno 305 GPU for better graphics. So Sony has doubled the processor of smartphone for better performance. The processor is same as we seen in Motorola’s Moto G smartphone.

There was a 5-megapixel auto focus camera at back in Xperia M with Flash, but now Sony came up with a better camera in M2, Sony Xperia M2 sports an 8-megapixel autofocus camera at back with LED Flash. The Xperia M2 comes with an Exmor RS™ for mobile image sensor. Xperia M camera only supports HDR for images, but now 8-megapixel camera of Xperia M2 supports HDR for both images and videos. The new Sony Xperia M2 comes with Sony’s premium camera apps like Social Live, Timeshift burst, AR Effect, Picture Effect, Background Defocus and Motion graph. The 5-megapixel camera of Xperia M supports up to 720p video recording, but the 8-megapixel auto focus camera of Xperia M2 supports full HD 1080p video recording. There is a VGA front camera as well for video calling.

The Xperia M launched with 1700mAh battery. However, now Sony has bumped up the battery capacity too and launched the Xperia M2 with a 2300mAh battery. It provides talk time up to 14 hours 14 min and stand by time up to 693 hours.

On the connectivity front, Sony Xperia M2 has NFC, LTE(4G), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. Sony is also offering 50GB of cloud storage with this smartphone free.

Sony has not said any word on pricing and availability of this device in India. But we hope it will be a good competitor in mid end range smartphones.

The specifications of Sony Xperia M2 look solid if we compare it to Motorola Moto G, but the price will be main point of this device. If Sony able to launch this device with an aggressive price than this device will be best Moto G competitor in the market.