Sony Xperia S review

Now here's where we think Sony has done something really stupid. It's fitted the Xperia S with a 1750mAh battery. That's not stupid in itself. But what is, is the fact that it has sealed it in.

Yup. Maybe they've taken lessons from Apple but if there's one way to raise the heckles of phone users, it's to put an irremovable battery which can then not be replaced when the power runs down. Which it will because the Xperia doesn't half guzzle juice.

We expected nothing else really as that Bravia screen isn't going to give you such beauty with no payoff. And if you do a lot of stuff with that screen on, you'll soon feel the pinch.

We managed to get a full day of usage out of the Xperia S when frugal but we weren't able to enjoy it as much as we could have done for that reason. It came off charge at 8am and we spent a good hour taking photos, browsing Twitter and listening to the FM radio.

By 10am, it was down to 69%. We moderated the use a lot after that panic inducing reading and got to 8pm before the battery conked out completely. Talk time is estimated as up to 8:30 hrs and 420hrs standby by Sony itself but this always has to be taken with a pinch of salt as that will be under optimum conditions and based on you using the Xperia S for little else than speaking. Who does that these days?

When it comes to connectivity, this phone has it all. The Xperia S ships with all the obvious bits and bobs like Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth but also includes the latest big thing: NFC. Although we had little use for it, we are assured over the coming year that this will transform our lives.

HSDPA is fast. And we mean really fast. Which is good because it means that we can take advantage of Android's brilliant ability to use the phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. One thing we did notice is that it doesn't automatically find your Wi-Fi network.

We're not sure if that was just a bug with our handset but we had to go through the settings to locate our network and join it rather than a pop up appearing when we first came into range. It only happened the once but it struck us as odd.

You can also tether the phone using the USB cable but remember, if you're on a Mac, using (or trying to use) said cable may put you into an early grave.

For those of us who just love to bore our friends/neighbours with our holiday snaps, DLNA is present and supported. We're told it works like a charm for those with Sony TV's (we're not lucky enough to have one) but we can confirm it is spot on if you try to use it with a PS3. Or you can go down the old fashioned route and use a cable.

Our review unit helpfully had a HDMI cable enclosed and the Xperia S has a HDMI out socket at the side so all should be hunky dory if you'd rather do it that way - and content did indeed look great even when chucked onto a large 50-inch screen.