Hands On: Sony Xperia Go

We received word that Sony was going to launch the Xperia Go sometime last week and the device went up o pre-order on online retailer HomeShop 18. Soon after, Sony came clean and told us that it would launch the device sometime in July and at the same time it handed us a review unit. Over the last few days we have been playing around with this waterproof wonder, so read on for our first impressions of the device.
The Xperia Go comes of as a petite device. It is neither very large nor very slim, which is a rather refreshing change from the current trend of super large smartphones. As it is a waterproof and dustproof, we expected all the ports to be well sealed and that’s exactly what we experienced. Sony has used rubberized flip covers on the charging and the 3.5mm jack ports, but unlike its previous flimsy implementations, the ones on the Xperia Go, lock-in quite tightly, however, they still don’t exude a lot of confidence.
The back of the Xperia Go is made up of a very rugged plastic compound that gives the user an in-hand feel more akin to sandpaper, but, it is not overly rough, and on the whole feels quite premium and solid simultaneously.
Additionally, because of the diminutive size of the device, it fits comfortably in the hand and is ideal for single-handed use and I dare say, it works even better than the iPhone in one hand partially due to the slight bevels on the sides. In comparison the aluminum band that can dig in to one’s hand while using an iPhone.
The 3.5-inch display on the Xperia Go utilizes LCD technology, backed up by Sony’s BRAVIA engine, however the resolution is a rather paltry HVGA of 320×480 pixels. But that’s something you will not notice immediately or until you actually read the specs of the device, because the amount of pixilation one expects of text on a HVGA display is clearly not found on the Xperia Go, in fact, it comes across as a much higher resolution panel. However, Sony is itself producing devices like Xperia U at much cheaper price points, which feature a higher resolution WVGA display, so one wonders why Sony has opted for a  lower resolution panel on the Xperia Go.
With a 1GHz dual-core processor, the Xperia Go can handle most day-to-day tasks with aplomb. You know, stuff like Twitter, Gmail, We browsing, Music, messaging and phone calls.  The Android 2.3 Gingerbread experience on the Sony smartphones is much better than on competitive devices from Samsung and HTC as the skin is less intrusive. The one thing we will appreciate in the next version of this skin is the ability to toggle Wi-Fi, Volume, and Auto Brightness from the Android Pull-down menu, a customization that is often employed by HTC and Samsung in their skins.
Lastly, the marquee feature on the Xperia Go is its ability to fend of water and dust. After opening the back cover of the device, we noticed that Sony had implemented a waterproof coating on the internal components like the battery, and additionally had provided rubberized covers for all the ports. We tested the waterproofing by dipping the device in a mug of water for five minutes and the phone came out scot free every time. However we did notice that if we made a call immediately after dipping the phone in water, the speaker would always get muffled and the using the device purely as a phone would be difficult at least for two hours, till the water was dried.
In the meanwhile we will continue testing the Xperia Go and we shall soon post a detailed review of the device. But as things remain right now, the Xperia Go is shaping up to be a pretty decent device, however we do feel the phone would have done better if Sony had not priced it so expensively at Rs 18,499.