BARCELONA: Sony has unveiled the Xperia M4 Aqua water-proof smartphone with Android 5.0 Lollipop with 13 MP camera, for under £250. Xperia M4 Aqua offers a two-day battery life thanks to its 2400 mAh battery.
The Sony Xperia M4 Aqua comes powered by a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Octa Core processor, with one set of quad cores running at 1.5 GHz and another at 1Ghz, alongside 2GB of RAM. The octa-core chip is just as impressive in the real world as it is on paper, and we found the device very nippy, especially for a smartphone of its size.
Sony said it launched the mid-range waterproof handset in a bid to “reboot” the mid-range phone market.
We got a hands-on at the show to see just how well this budget device translated to real world experience.
The Xperia M4 Aqua has a very similar design theme to the rest of the Xperia Z line-up, and reminds us a little of a slightly bigger version of the Sony Z3 Compact, which in terms of design is no bad thing.
It fits nicely in hand and the material it is made with means the device feels comfortable to hold, albeit a little cheaper than its higher end counterparts, as you’d expect. It still feels pretty decent for a device of this price point.
The Xperia M4 Aqua measures just 7.3mm thick and weighs just 136g, which also makes it feel exceptionally compact and light weight for a budget 5in Android device. One niggle we had was that, as with other Xperia Z handsets, the M4 Aqua was very prone to finger print marks and smudges.
There’s no prizes for guessing why Sony has called it the Aqua, and this is owing to its waterproof and dust tight IP65 and IP68 ratings. We tested this out by throwing the phone in a fish bowl full of water, and can confirm it survived and worked flawlessly once it had resurfaced. It is worth noting that touch screen input won’t work underwater, though.
What’s especially impressive about the Xperia M4 Aqua is its capless USB-charging, which also features on the Xperia Z4 Tablet, which was announced at the same time. This means users won’t have to pull open any tabs to charge the device and close them again to make it waterproof.
We really like this feature and think it goes to show that sometimes small changes can make a big difference, as it saves a small amount of time each time you want to charge the device.
Screen
The Xperia M4 Aqua’s 5in HD display boasts a pixel resolution of 1280×720 pixels, which admittedly isn’t the best. We are used to full HD on smartphone devices these days, so naturally jagged edges were present around certain images if look at closely, and text lacked defined edges, but it still impressive for a smartphone at the price point.
The touch screen had good brightness levels, however, and its performance was what you’d expect, handling all gestures we threw at it with ease.
Performance
We weren’t expecting to be blown away with the M4 Aqua’s performance due to it being a much lower spec device when compared to the higher end Xperia Z3, but in our hands-on tests it fared surprisingly well, especially at a mid-range price point.
