Curtains up on the Performance

SONY HAS capped its X series of smartphones, which replaced the flagship Z line, with the Xperia X Performance, complete with great looks, an excellent main camera and good performance all round.

The Performance gets its formidable power from a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor and holds three gigabytes of working memory (RAM) and 64GB of internal storage.

The fast CPU comes with an advanced X12 LTE adapter to ensure rapid CAT 9 connections and graphics and impressive photos and videos.

The sleek metal body boasts a stylish “hairline” finish in black or white, curved display and a seamless metal back. It’s also available in elegant Rose Gold. 

The display is a five-inch Full HD Triluminos powered by an X-Reality engine, resulting in vibrant colours and good contrast. Viewing photos and high-definition video on this screen is a treat. 

The Performance is water resistant enough (IP65 and IP68 rating) to handle casual splashes and rain, and you can even wash the phone under a faucet, but Sony warns against submerging it underwater.

In my test, the Performance lived up to its name, running game applications speedily and playing HD video clips smoothly. The menus and touch screen were very responsive.

I tested the data connection on TrueMove H’s LTE 4G network, hooked in really fast, downloaded apps rapidly and sent my photos to the Google Photos cloud instantly.

The Ookla speedtest app clocked downloads at 131.65 megabytes per second and uploads at 31.85Mbps – the fastest speeds I’ve ever achieved with a phone.

You can insert two nano SIM cards. The SIM Management function makes it easy to use one for voice calls and the other for whatever else – data connections, for example. The second SIM goes in the same slot as a microSD card.

The second-most impressive performance from the X Performance is in playing High-Res Audio music tracks. These can be FLAC 24bit/192kHz and DSD formats as well. Heard through Sony’s MDR-1ABT high-resolution headphones, the FLAC sound quality coming out of the phone is amazing, not a note missed, whether high or low.

LDAC Bluetooth connections allow these High-Res Audio songs to be streamed wirelessly to the headphones at 24bit/96kHz, just slightly less than the original formatting. In my test I got satisfactory sound quality with an MDR-1ABT LDAC Bluetooth connection.

The phone also comes with stereo speakers that offer good sound quality, using S-Force Front surround technology.

But it’s really the twin cameras are the stars of the Xperia Performance. The 23-megapixel main camera has fast auto-focus and the 13MP rear unit is a low-light selfie cam.

The main camera uses a 23MP Exmor RS-for-mobile image sensor with “predictive” hybrid auto-focus and a high-quality 24mm-equivalent wide-angel G lens with 5x “clear image” zoom.

It’s got truly high sensitivity for a phone – ISO12800 for still photos and ISO3200 for videos – so it gets great results in dim light.

There’s a dedicated camera button so you can be ready to take shots right out of standby mode in less than a sixth of a second. The auto-focus takes less than 0.03 of a second.

Sony says the Predictive Hybrid Autofocus makes the Performance the best on the market for capturing moving objects. It actually “predicts” the motion so that the object, once selected, stays in focus while moving. The manufacturer might be right that the Performance can’t be beat when it comes to taking pictures of racing cars and fast-moving objects closer to home, like enthusiastic pets and hyperactive children.

Photos taken by the main camera in Superior Auto mode are invariably terrific in terms of good exposure and clarity, including the lights at night and streams of traffic headlights and taillights. I got one startling nighttime shot from inside a city bus of the red brake lights of vehicles in front, sharply contrasted with the bus interior. Superior Auto mode measures the ambient light and applies the appropriate scene setting, or you can select your own scene mode manually. You have Soft Skin, Soft Snap, Anti-motion Blur, Landscape, Backlight Correction HDR, Night Portrait, Night Scene, Hand-held Twilight, Gourmet, Pet, Sports, Document and Fireworks.

In manual mode you can also adjust the white balance and exposure compensation.

The phone is pre-loaded with apps for camera special effects – Face in Picture, Sweep Panorama, Style Portrait and Creative Effect – and more are available to download.

The X Performance has a fingerprint sensor on the power button for seamless unlocking. I had no trouble unlocking it with a flash of my right thumb.

Then there’s the fast Wi-Fi 802.11 AC connection, with which I connected to my Linksys WRT1200AC router and was able to quickly retrieve video files from my home computer.

And, if you own a PS4 game console, there’s a Remote Play app on the Performance that lets you play in any room.

Sony’s “smart” battery management and Qnovo Adaptive Charging let the phone adjust the charging current to give keep its battery healthy and last up to twice as long. Quick Charging 2.0 is possible, and with the provided Quick Charger UCH10 you can give the phone a 5.5-hour charge in just 10 minutes.

The Xperia X Performance has a suggested retail price of Bt23,990.

 

Key Specs

- Operating system: Android 6.0.1

- Networks: UMTS HSPA+: 800 (Band VI), 800 (Band XIX), 850 (Band V), 900 (Band VIII), 1700 (Band IV), 1900 (Band II), 2100 (Band I) MHz; GSM GPRS/EDGE: 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz; LTE (Bands 1,2,3,4,5,7,8,12,13,17,19,20, 26,28,29,38,39,40,41)

- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor 2.2GHz

- GPU: Adreno 530 624MHz

- Memory: 3GB

- Storage: 64GB internal storage, expandable

- Display: Five-inch Full HD 1080p TRILUMINOS Display for mobile with 443ppi

- Cameras: Main 23MP Exmor RS mobile sensor, f/2.0 G lens; front 13MP Exmor RS, f/2.0 lens

- Connectivity: Wi-Fi Miracast, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, DNLA, Google Cast

- Sound: High-resolution audio LPCM, FLAC, ALAC, DSD

- Dimensions: 144x71x8.6mm

- Weight: 165g