Sony Xperia M4 Aqua Dual : A love-hate experience

Sony Xperia M4 Aqua is an attractive mid-range 5-inch HD display Android smartphone with the main striking features like being Waterproof certified with IP65/IP68 rating. A shooter with primary 13 megapixel camera and 5MP selfie front camera. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Octa-core 64-bit clock at 1.46Ghz. And it has a 2-day battery life and support Dual-sim card. Last but not least it actually comes with NFC which is proudly printed on the back cover. Shortfall was no LTE/4G (not available in all markets) for the Dual variance.

After reading many impressive reviews and going through the local Sony website on Xperia M4 Aqua, I went ahead and got one all for $220 which is almost half the price of the flagship Xperia Z3. What a good buy, right? Wait a minute!

With much excitement and enthusiasm, I unboxed it quickly, admiring the built of the phone. And I went on to plug-in my sim-card, I realized it wasn’t the mini-sim as shown on the images on the product website. Anyway, that’s not to worry about, after all being an avid iPhone user, I always get the nano-sim, so I just have to inset it without the adaptor.

Next, setup the phone for initial usage. The screen resolution looks sharp and crisp. Went on to update the Google Play Store and install the popular social networking apps like Whatsapp, Viber, Line App and a few more. And that’s when it started giving all memory warnings. Hell no! I have used 85% of the device memory. What?! I have not even update the preloaded apps on the phone and I already getting these warnings. Alright, no doubt it comes with 8GB of storage (16GB is no currently available), but I just could not comprehend the scenario. Well, first thing first, deleting the preloaded apps. The result, I managed to delete a few Launcher rather than an app which is a few tenths of megabyte, that I gained. What choice do I have other than to plug-in a memory card. Knowingly well enough calling an app will be much delayed from the SD memory allocation. Now, I have to jiggle with app size to download as I have very limited space to deal with. It is kind of silly due to the limitation of memory usage, literally speaking, you have approximately 2.89GB of memory available, for your apps, photos and other media. The Official Sony Product website is very misleading to small print which I extracted from http://www.sonymobile.com
“*****The M4 Aqua Dual has 3 GB of free memory (before you update preloaded applications) available to the user for downloaded applications and their data, music, pictures and movies while the device has up to 8 GB of flash memory in total.” which I found is not correct, as I reset the M4 Aqua to see the real truth to Sony’s claim. Reading between the line, I am pretty sure Sony is well aware, should the “Preloaded Apps” were updated, the device storage will shrink with little or no space for other user apps to be installed, other than to move most the apps to the SD card.

     

All images have not been edited or Photoshop and “as it is”. (Click to see full size)

Verdict:

• Nice build
• Camera is good for a mid-range phone
• Audio is quite good and loud
• HD screen is sharp and crisp
• Waterproof, but the headphone jack did went haywire when submerged in the pipe water
• Battery life not consistent
• Network signal not really reliable
• 8GB is definitely not enough and not a selling point
• Overall performance is sluggish

Thoughts:

I am a bit skeptical about the Snapdragon 615 especially the over-heating glitch and etc, while a few devices manage to work around the problems. The Xperia M4 Aqua does feel hot at times and having a just 8GB simply is not helping since the Android 5.0 (Lollipop) Operating System file is occupying more than 4.00GB of space plus the preloaded Sony related apps which does not give an option to delete is really squeezing the good user experience to the max. Xperia M4 is in line to receive this crucial Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS update with the memory management but will it help?

With all the bloatware (pre-installed apps) on Android’s openness by cellular carriers and phone manufacturers often make the experience worse for it users, and that thin line separate iOS devices user and making iOS platform a premium and maximum user experience, without bloatware.

© 2015 Felix Senada. All rights reserved.

Mi4i - Luke-warm experience

Xiaomi Mi 4i is another addition to the Mi lineup, a mid-range edition of the company’s flagship Mi 4 target market for India being the affordable flagship to compete with other phone in the same price segment.

Design and display

The Mi 4i is lighter and thinner compared to its flagship Mi4 with a thickness of just 7.8 mm, and weighing 130 grams. The phone has a nice grip with the compact size giving it a comfortable handling experience, and convenient for one-hand operation.

The Xiaomi Mi 4i features a similar 5" Full HD IPS display to Mi 4. It has 441ppi for pleasantly sharp sunlight display.Unfortunately, the lack of Gorilla glass display protection is a big concern though Xiaomi promises some scratch resistance for its Corning OGS panels.

Hardware and Performance

It comes with a variant of 16GB and 32GB of storage on-board and lacking the microSD slot for expansion. Nonetheless, there are two micro SIM card slots and 4G connectivity.

The Xiaomi Mi 4i is powered by a second generation 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor, clocked at 1.7 GHz, and graphically powered by the Adreno 405 GPU and 2 GB of RAM.

Considering it is packed with a mid-range processor, performance is smooth and flawless. Gaming and multi-tasking experience is quite impressive without all the lags and glitches. Battery performance is still a mind boggling issue, depending on the version of MIUI software installed.

While, heating problem still plaque the 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor, and since there wasn’t any ways around it to rectify it still. This is obviously evident, when performing processor intensive task, like gaming and even surfing the web and it is quite an uncomfortable experience.

Camera

Xiaomi Mi 4i comes with a 13 megapixel rear camera with a dual LED flash, and 5MP selfie front camera, and the device takes some great photos and comparable with other using Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 and a 13MP shooter, eg. Sony Xperia Aqua M.

All images have not been edited or Photoshop and “as it is”.


Specifications

Display	5-inch IPS LCD, 1920 x 1080 resolution, 441 ppi
Processor	1.7GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Adreno 405 GPU
RAM	2 GB
Storage	16GB, 32GB not expandable
Camera	13MP rear camera with dual LED flash  5 MP front camera
Connectivity	Cat.4 LTE (150/50Mbps), Wi-Fi802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct,  Bluetooth 4.1, FM Radio
Battery	3,120 mAh
OS	MIUI OS 6 based on Android 5.0.2 Lollipop
SIM	Dual SIM (Micro-SIM, dual stand-by)
Colors	White, yellow, pink, grey, blue
Dimensions	138.1x 69.6 x 7.8 mm
Weight	130 grams

Thoughts

Firstly, I do hope that a more refined MIUI ROM to address the really issue of heat plaquing the Snapdragon 615 and the battery performance. As you could see above the standby time is as good as 2 days plus, just because my Mi 4i is my secondary phone. The issue here is that, my phone is in deep sleep, meaning to say, when I get notifications from eg. Whatsapp, FB or Line,on my iPhone 6, while I realized that on my Mi 4i it is not getting the notifications, until I revive the phone.


Next, I would think the MIUI interface riding on the Lollipop 5.02 is using a space of at least more then 5GB, hence a variant of 16GB or 32GB will only be left with less than 11GB or 27GB respectively.

The 5-element lens, f/2.0 aperture with Two-tone flash,takes some great photos and comparable with other using Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 and a 13MP shooter, eg. Sony Xperia Aqua M which is a water and dust proof.

With the lack of Gorilla glass display protection is a big concern as the screen can easily get scratch even in the pocket, so a screen protector is eminent.

Last but not least, it is a good phone with an unbeatable price tag and features, but not quite the “affordable flagship” as the manufacturer claim which other Mi lineup eg. Redmi Note 2/Prime/3 can square with or even surpass.