Sony Xperia Go review

Contacts

As with many of the Sony Xperia Go's rival phones, be they Samsung or HTC-branded, the Sony handset's contacts services are much of the usual Android fare, with a simple, well laid out setup offering quick and easy - albeit far from inspiring - access to contacts.

Accessed via a dedicated application icon that can be found in the handset's centralised apps menu or pinned to one of the device's numerous home screens, the Sony Xperia Go's contact features see all stored data displayed in handy, familiar alphabetical fashion.

As easy to add a contact as it is to access the personnel storage service, a simplistic template with pre-organised input boxes ensures speedy, efficient data collection and a user-friendly formulaic system that is pleasant to navigate and doesn't become clogged with unnecessary details.

Although it is possible to sync your social networking contacts such as Facebook Friends lists with the Sony Xperia Go's centralised contacts form, doing so proves problematic, with the phone intent on only adding social details for people who are already added to the device rather than simply mirroring the available details, as found on many rival handsets.

Calling

Moving away from the handset's contacts and on to the Sony Xperia Go's calling capabilities, the story is much the same - a familiar Android-based interface that offers a smooth, useful user experience that fails to offer any revolutionary features or market-defining functions.

Despite this relatively formulaic setup, the Sony Xperia Go could have benefited from Sony focusing less on the unnecessary entertainment-based bells and whistles and more on the calling performance, with a number of niggles detracting from what is an otherwise very solid smartphone.

Although there are no issues with signal strength - the handset's 3G base in fact performs admirably - calls are far from clear, with the speaker creating a muffled effect to voices that can prove problematic, while background noise at times is all too apparent.

Despite these concerns, the Sony Xperia Go lines up against the majority of its competitors on level ground, with far too many other mid-range smartphones failing to fully address strong calling capabilities.