An Android-exclusive feature - rugged smartphones have literally been riding the wave, since the launch of the Motorola Defy that packed quite a punch or two in it’s IP67 certified shield. This year, more competitors, like the Xperia Active, the Defy+ and the Samsung Xcover entered the rugged Android smartphone race. Sony Ericsson’s latest entrant in their Xperia series, the Active or the ST17i is built and designed for those wanting to or have an active lifestyle. But is it worth the bucks? Let’s find out.
Design and Build Quality
The first thing you’ll notice about the Xperia Active is its relatively miniscule display size. It's relative, if you compare it to the 4+ inches sized phones that are currently in the market. But the Active doesn’t aim to compete with them, in terms of display size. It has got a rather different ace up its sleeve. It’s a rugged smartphone and with the design it’s got, it’ll take care of you, rather than the other way round.
Rugged generally indicates a sturdy, strong, no-nonsense design. But, the Active is not built like an armoured combat vehicle; on the contrary, it’s got this cutesy appearance that might just make people wrongly overlook this phone. The phone has a rubberized back with a silver rim running along the sides and owing to its size; it fits snugly into your hand. The rubberized finish pretty much ensures it doesn’t slip out of your hands. Also, it isn’t too heavy, with the weight being 110.8 grams.
The front consists of the 3-inch Bravia Mobile engine LED-backlit LCD screen with an ambient light sensor and a notification LED above it. Also, SE has put in two proximity sensors, yes two, and we’re not too sure about the functionality of the second one. Sadly, it doesn’t come with a secondary camera. Those who want to take self-shots during a rainy hike, or just whilst surfing might have to put those thoughts aside, for now at least. The first of the two noise cancelling microphones is located right underneath the screen, whilst the second is located at the back, next to the 5 megapixel camera, the LED flash and the loudspeaker. The left consists of the power button, the volume rocker and dedicated camera button are located on the right. The only two physical connectivity options, the 3.5mm slot and the microUSB slot are located at the bottom, under air-tight rubberized flaps. There’s a slight gap above the buttons, which facilitates easy removal and securing of the flap, whilst still adhering to the water resistance certification.
There’s some engineering goodness under the back cover. Access to the internal parts of the phone is restricted by a second plastic case with a rubber seal along the sides that ensures it stays air-tight on the internal chassis. The 1200 mAh battery, SIM card and the microSD card are located underneath the dual protection covers. The memory card isn’t located under the battery though, and you can swap it without having to restart your phone. With all the protection mechanisms and flaps underneath that shell, the Xperia looks and feels like a powerful rugged device.
That said, it’s not the kind of phone you’ll take when you’re in the mood to go scuba diving. It’s important to know what the phone can and can’t do with the Ingress Protection rating it has got. At IP67, the numerical six indicates that it’s totally protected against dust, whilst the numerical seven indicates that it’s protected against the effect of immersion between 15cm and 1m for up to half an hour.
The phone comes with additional gear as well in the form of an armband, which could have been designed better to incorporate the headphone jack in the casing; a rubberized lanyard strap that you can wear on your wrist ala the strap on a Wii-remote and ear hooks to keep your headphones firmly in place. There are a couple of interchangeable back panels as well.
With the unique design and the reinforced build, the Active is a nimble and small, but a sporty and rugged Android smartphone that you won’t need to worry too much about. We performed a couple of underwater tests on the phone. Head over to the video below to see the phone being pushed to its limits.
Features
Interface
The Active runs on a 1GHz Scorpion processor with an Adreno 205 graphics processing unit. With that processing power, we expected the onboard Timescape UI and the corner icon homescreen to work quick and smooth, and the phone didn’t disappoint. Flicking through the menus and overall navigation is as quick as any other top-tier handset. Multitasking is handled pretty well with 512 MB of RAM and internal storage amounts to 1GB, of which 320 MB is user available.
The four corners of the screen can hold shortcuts to applications and the rest of the screen is dedicated to widgets, shortcuts and other applications. In case a widget is too big, the top or the bottom corner icons get hidden to incorporate it onto the screen. The Timescape UI now supports calls, Facebook, messages and Twitter in its timeline and it does prove particularly useful if you quickly want to browse through your Twitter feeds.
The phone has a wet finger tracking feature and though there is a certain threshold after which it doesn’t recognize the wet touch, it works pretty well and will help those who use their phone whilst sweating it out in the gym or jogging in the rain.
We put the phone through a couple of synthetic tests as well. AnTuTu gave the Active a benchmark score of 2888, putting it in a similar range of the Nexus S. Linpack gave a single thread score of 33.706 MFLOPS and a multi thread score of 38.141 MFLOPS, which is telling.
A 3 inch Bravia Mobile display
Design and Build Quality
The first thing you’ll notice about the Xperia Active is its relatively miniscule display size. It's relative, if you compare it to the 4+ inches sized phones that are currently in the market. But the Active doesn’t aim to compete with them, in terms of display size. It has got a rather different ace up its sleeve. It’s a rugged smartphone and with the design it’s got, it’ll take care of you, rather than the other way round.
Dual protection layers
Rugged generally indicates a sturdy, strong, no-nonsense design. But, the Active is not built like an armoured combat vehicle; on the contrary, it’s got this cutesy appearance that might just make people wrongly overlook this phone. The phone has a rubberized back with a silver rim running along the sides and owing to its size; it fits snugly into your hand. The rubberized finish pretty much ensures it doesn’t slip out of your hands. Also, it isn’t too heavy, with the weight being 110.8 grams.
Sealing up the connectors
The front consists of the 3-inch Bravia Mobile engine LED-backlit LCD screen with an ambient light sensor and a notification LED above it. Also, SE has put in two proximity sensors, yes two, and we’re not too sure about the functionality of the second one. Sadly, it doesn’t come with a secondary camera. Those who want to take self-shots during a rainy hike, or just whilst surfing might have to put those thoughts aside, for now at least. The first of the two noise cancelling microphones is located right underneath the screen, whilst the second is located at the back, next to the 5 megapixel camera, the LED flash and the loudspeaker. The left consists of the power button, the volume rocker and dedicated camera button are located on the right. The only two physical connectivity options, the 3.5mm slot and the microUSB slot are located at the bottom, under air-tight rubberized flaps. There’s a slight gap above the buttons, which facilitates easy removal and securing of the flap, whilst still adhering to the water resistance certification.
Two proximity sensors on top of the screen
There’s some engineering goodness under the back cover. Access to the internal parts of the phone is restricted by a second plastic case with a rubber seal along the sides that ensures it stays air-tight on the internal chassis. The 1200 mAh battery, SIM card and the microSD card are located underneath the dual protection covers. The memory card isn’t located under the battery though, and you can swap it without having to restart your phone. With all the protection mechanisms and flaps underneath that shell, the Xperia looks and feels like a powerful rugged device.
That said, it’s not the kind of phone you’ll take when you’re in the mood to go scuba diving. It’s important to know what the phone can and can’t do with the Ingress Protection rating it has got. At IP67, the numerical six indicates that it’s totally protected against dust, whilst the numerical seven indicates that it’s protected against the effect of immersion between 15cm and 1m for up to half an hour.
Comes with a load of accessories
The phone comes with additional gear as well in the form of an armband, which could have been designed better to incorporate the headphone jack in the casing; a rubberized lanyard strap that you can wear on your wrist ala the strap on a Wii-remote and ear hooks to keep your headphones firmly in place. There are a couple of interchangeable back panels as well.
The bundled arm band accessory
With the unique design and the reinforced build, the Active is a nimble and small, but a sporty and rugged Android smartphone that you won’t need to worry too much about. We performed a couple of underwater tests on the phone. Head over to the video below to see the phone being pushed to its limits.
Features
Interface
The Active runs on a 1GHz Scorpion processor with an Adreno 205 graphics processing unit. With that processing power, we expected the onboard Timescape UI and the corner icon homescreen to work quick and smooth, and the phone didn’t disappoint. Flicking through the menus and overall navigation is as quick as any other top-tier handset. Multitasking is handled pretty well with 512 MB of RAM and internal storage amounts to 1GB, of which 320 MB is user available.
The interface
The four corners of the screen can hold shortcuts to applications and the rest of the screen is dedicated to widgets, shortcuts and other applications. In case a widget is too big, the top or the bottom corner icons get hidden to incorporate it onto the screen. The Timescape UI now supports calls, Facebook, messages and Twitter in its timeline and it does prove particularly useful if you quickly want to browse through your Twitter feeds.
The phone has a wet finger tracking feature and though there is a certain threshold after which it doesn’t recognize the wet touch, it works pretty well and will help those who use their phone whilst sweating it out in the gym or jogging in the rain.
The benchmarks
We put the phone through a couple of synthetic tests as well. AnTuTu gave the Active a benchmark score of 2888, putting it in a similar range of the Nexus S. Linpack gave a single thread score of 33.706 MFLOPS and a multi thread score of 38.141 MFLOPS, which is telling.
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