Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Valentina Palladino

Sony is switching gears when it comes to smartphones and that shift is embodied in the new X line of handsets. There's the Xperia XA Ultra, a "selfie" smartphone with a 16-megapixel front-facing camera, the middle-of-the-road Xperia X equipped with a Snapdragon 650 processor, and then there's the Xperia X Performance. This device is the "flagship" of sorts for the new line, sporting a 5-inch FHD display, a Snapdragon 820 processor, and 3GB of RAM.

New letter aside, some of these X phones pick up right where the Z series left off, which means that in some ways they feel just a step behind the rest of the competition. The X Performance's biggest problem isn't that it's a bad phone, but that it's a $700 (£500) phone that often feels inferior to $400 (£330) phones.

Look and feel

All of Sony's new Xperia X smartphones look quite similar, and the Xperia X Performance looks nearly identical to the standard Xperia X. Thanks to a better processor and a larger battery, the X Performance is just about a millimeter thicker and a few grams heavier than the Xperia X. While the lower-powered handset resembles a more rigid iPhone 6s, the X Performance emphasizes its blockiness with the additional thickness and weight.

Specs at a glance: Sony Xperia X Performance Processor Snapdragon 820 Display 5-inch 1920 x 1080-pixel LCD OS Android 6.0.1 Cameras 23-megapixel rear; 13MP front-facing RAM 3GB Storage 32GB (up to 64GB flash memory) GPU Adreno 530 Connectivity WiFi Miracast, WiFi MIMO, Bluetooth 4.2 Ports Micro USB, 3.5mm headphone jack Size 5.6 x 2.77 x 0.33 in (142 x 70 x 8mm) Weight 5.8 ounces (640g) Battery 2700 mAh Price $699/£500 unlocked Other perks rear camera: predictive hybrid autofocus, quick launch, HDR, SteadyShot; front-facing camera: ISO 6400, quick launch, SteadyShot

However, that extra heft doesn't mean the X Performance isn't an attractive phone. Its rounded glass edges and brushed metal back give it an elegant look. And aside from the covered Nano SIM slot on the left side, the power button, volume rocker, and Quick Launch camera button are on the right side. It charges via a micro USB port, forgoing the new USC Type-C standard many other OEMs are working hard to introduce into any and all new products.

The 5.6-inch tall handset sports a 5-inch FHD display, which is the same panel that's on the Xperia X. It's a fine display that shows off vibrant colors and can get decently bright, but it's nothing remarkable. It's also slightly smaller than that of Sony's Z5 smartphone, which debuted last year. The X Performance also lacks a fingerprint sensor, a feature that has become increasingly common in other Android phones. Now that Android M natively supports fingerprint sensors, this feels like a big oversight on Sony's part. For whatever reason, the international version of the X Performance does have a fingerprint sensor, so it's anyone's guess as to why it was excluded here.

Sony added a quick launch button for its camera on the bottom right side of the handset, a relatively rare feature found more commonly on Windows phones. The quick launch button does come in handy when you need to snap a photo very quickly: press it once to open the camera in milliseconds and again to take a photo.

Software and camera

The X Performance's software doesn't add much to what we saw in Sony's Z5 Compact, Android 6.0 aside. There's the convenient Quick Settings editing mode, which allows you to change and rearrange the icons in the Quick Settings drawer. There are also Sony's two unique battery saving modes, Stamina and Ultra Stamina, which reduce certain activities on the phone to save power. I'd use Stamina mode more, since it just restricts the use of the GPS, image enhancement, vibration, and rendering performance of the handset. Ultra Stamina mode seems to be for times when you're out in the wilderness for days without a charger with no relief in site and you need the phone to last for days on end. In Ultra Stamina mode, you'll only have access to certain apps including phone, messages, contacts, camera, settings, and clock.

There's also a lot of Sony bloatware that you'll probably never use. A few of them look like poor imitations of Google apps, like Sony's Lifelog app, which is basically the company's version of Google Fit. The only apps that would probably be useful are the Playstation app (also available on other Android phones) and the Sketch app where you can kill spare time doodling.

As for the X Performances cameras, the rear is a 23-megapixel shooter and the front-facing camera has 13MP which is nice for selfie enthusiasts since most smartphones cap their front cameras at 5MP or 8MP. The rear camera performed well in bright, natural lighting, as you can see below, when compared to the more blown-out photos taken by the Nexus 5X. However, the Nexus 5X's photos consistently had sharper detail, whereas the X Performance rendered many of the finer details invisible. The predictive hybrid autofocus is a nice feature as well—immediately when you bring up the camera, a small rectangle appears on the viewer, showing you where it automatically focuses in the frame. You can change that just by tapping on the viewer, but it's convenient to have the feature for simple landscape or even portrait photos.









That's where the expertise of the X Performance's rear camera stops. In low light situations (below), even photos taken with flash were filled with noise and came out slightly blurry each time. Colors also rendered much weaker in these dark situations, giving the upper-hand to the Nexus 5X.









Performance

Instead of the Xperia X's Snapdragon 650 CPU, the X Performance has the speedier Snapdragon 820 chip. Overall, the handset was snappy and took little time to open new apps and switch between already opened programs. While it was on par with competitors like the Nexus 5X in some cases, it did fall short in some of our benchmarks to the Galaxy Note 5 and the OnePlus 3. Possibly thanks to its 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, the OnePlus 3 performed better than the X Performance in nearly every benchmark test (our X Performance has 3GB of RAM and just 32GB of storage).











The X Performance faired better against the OnePlus 3 in our GPU tests, although the OnePlus 3 still managed to out perform it by a hair. The X Performance is also prone to get hot under stress, which will make it uncomfortable to hold after a while.







Battery life

The X Performance's 2700 mAh battery lasted 545 minutes on our default battery test (about 9 hours), and 276 minutes on a WebGL battery test that works the GPU (a little over 4.5 hours). While it's on the low side of our default results, it still offers a pretty good battery life that will last you all day or even longer if you take advantage of Sony's battery saving modes. On both tests, the OnePlus 3 lasted longer than the X Performance, but only by a few minutes on the WebGL test.





Difficult to make a case for

Sony's Xperia X Performance is a confusing smartphone. Arguably the biggest thing about it is that it's the "flagship" of Sony's newest line of smartphones, the X line that the company will be focusing on going forward. However, when you compare it to existing Sony handsets, like the Xperia Z5 and Z5 Compact, it doesn't offer much more and yet it costs $699 (£500) unlocked. With a price like that, the X Performance should unquestionably lead the pack of Sony smartphones in design, performance, and features, much like Samsung's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge do for its smartphones—but it just doesn't do that. It simply feels like any other Sony smartphone with no truly remarkable features.

The OnePlus 3 also clearly shows up the X Performance in nearly every way. It performed slightly better in all of our benchmarks, has 64GB of storage as well as 6GB of RAM (even if the usefulness of that is debatable), includes a fingerprint sensor, charges via USB Type-C, and has a kicker price of just $400 (£330). It's also worth mentioning that you do have a $400 (£359) option if you prefer iOS to Android—Apple's iPhone SE might be smaller in size than the X Performance, but it provides all-around better performance than Sony's handset since it's basically an iPhone 6S on the inside.

If you're going to spend $699 or more on an unlocked smartphone, you could easily opt for one of the elite flagships like the Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge. Even if you didn't like any of the handsets from the major players like Samsung, the OnePlus 3 is a better option than the X Performance, especially now that the company has rid itself of the invite system to let anyone purchase the OnePlus 3.

The Good

Elegant glass and brushed metal design.

Sony's Android skin lets you tweak certain settings more easily, and gives you extra battery saving options.

Quick launch camera button lets you snap photos with just two presses.

Good battery life.

The Bad

Overall performance isn't up to par with the OnePlus 3.

Gets hot easily.

No USB Type-C connector.

Expensive for what it offers.

The Ugly

The obvious lack of a fingerprint sensor.

Listing image by Valentina Palladino