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Sony's new Xperia enhances the selfie experience with a powerful front camera
A 4G SMARTPHONE apparently designed to focus on improving the selfie experience, the Sony Xperia C4 Dual comes with a 5-megapixel front camera that boasts a 25-mm wide-angle lens and an 80-degree field of view, allowing you to take selfie shots with many friends.
The front camera also uses the Sony Exmor R image sensor that can capture sharp shots even in a low-light environment. There’s a soft LED flash to make sure your face looks bright and healthy and an HDR function in the Superior Auto shooting mode so your face will not look dark even when you take a selfie shot with a strong backlight.
Positively skinny at just 7.9mm thick and weighing a mere 147 grams, the C4 is available in black, white and mint.
Performance is good thanks to a 64-bit octa-core MediaTek MTK6752 processor running at 1.7 GHz. The C4 has 2 gigabytes of working memory or RAM and 16 GB of storage, which is expandable with a microSD card up to 128 GB. It runs on the latest Android 5.0 operating system.
The C4 comes with a 5.5-inch IPS display boasting 1920 x 1080-pixel resolution so it is also good for watching HD movies and viewing photos. It plays High-Resolution Audio music files too at the full-resolution of FLAC 24bit/192 kHz. I tested the Hi-Res music playback with Sony MDR-1ABT Hi-Res headphones and was impressed by the clarity and deep bass.
Moreover, the music player of C4 uses ClearAudio+ technologies – Clear Stereo, Clear Bass and Clear Phase – to boost the music quality.
You can also share the music from your C4 with friends through a speaker capable of delivering up to 97 decibels using the Sony xloud loudness enhancement engine.
The C4 Dual has dual SIM slots for inserting nanoSIM cards and supports 4G LTE connection. I tested the connection on TrueMove H’s 4G LTE network and was pleased with the fast connection speed. I uploaded snapshots to my Facebook wall in a jiffy and my snapshots were backed up to Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive in no time.
I tested the connection speed with the Ookla speedtest app and found that C4 achieved a download speed of 52.22 Mbps and upload speed of 21.99 Mbps.
Its capability to play Hi-Res audio files smoothly is an indicator that the smartphone has good performance. Moreover, its touch screen and menus were responsive and the screen scrolling was fast.
The C4’s main 13-megapixel-resolution camera also captured impressive shots, even at night, using Exmor RS for mobile image sensor with HDR technology.
It too has Superior Auto shooting mode that recognises up to 52 scenarios and automatically adjusts shooting parameters for optimal shots. Or you can use the Manual mode that will allow you to select programmed scene modes manually. Those modes include Landscape, Backlight correction HDR, Night portrait Hand-held twilight, Pet, Document, and Fireworks.
There is also the Style Portrait mode that allows you to apply touch-up effects to portrait photos as you take them. The Magic beam setting adds a spotlight pattern for the eyes.
You can also download more camera applications to use with the C4.
During the test, I found that the C4 captured beautiful portraits with the Soft skin effect. The photos I took in most environments were sharp and clean and the Hand-held twilight mode worked well in snapping the lights at night.
The C4 has a 2,600 mAh battery. You can activate the Battery Stamina mode and choose between Extended standby mode and Extended usage mode, which gives up an additional 14 per cent of chat time.
Another mode, Ultra Stamina Mode, is useful when you are about to run out of battery. It will limit your phone to core functions, such as calls and SMS, and turn your display to black and white. For example, when its battery is at about 75 per cent, the phone can last for 3 days 3 hours.
Sony Xperia C4 Dual has a suggested retail price of Bt10,990.
Key Specs
- Networks: 2G: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900; 3G: HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100; 4G: LTE: band 1(2100), 3(1800), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 20(800)
- OS: Google Android 5.0 (Lollipop)
- Processor: 1.7 GHz Mediatek MT6752 Octa Core
- GPU: ARM MaliT760-MP2
- Memory: 2GB
- Storage: 16 GB internal, expandable with microSD card by up to 128
- Display: 5.5-inch IPS panel with 1920 x 1080 pixels
- Cameras: 13MP Exmor RS main camera; 5MP Exmor R front camera
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, DLNA, Miracast, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n
- Battery: 2600 mAh
- Size: 150.3 x 77.4 x 7.9 mm
- Weight: 147 grams
