An incredibly bright screen and Android Oreo aren’t enough to make Sony’s bulky midrange phone worth its steep price tag. Recent smartphones from Sony have saddled otherwise powerful and pleasing-to-use smartphones with outdated designs and a lack of critical features.

Its last flagship device, the Xperia XZ1was a perfect example; although we loved shooting with its super slow-motion camerait was incredibly bulky to hold and didn’t even come with a fingerprint sensor.

Sony’s new midrange offering, the Xperia XA2 Ultra, attempts to right some of those wrongs. For one, there’s actually a working fingerprint sensor on the back.

HTC U11 vs Sony Xperia XZ Premium: which flagship wins? | AndroidPIT

And although the XA2 Ultra still has a conventional display, the bezels have been trimmed a hair, yet are still wide enough to support dual front-facing cameras.

Unfortunately, it’s not enough. The XA2 Ultra simply feels like more of the same. Sony’s upcoming flagships, the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compactfigure to bring the design overhaul the company’s mobile lineup so desperately needs.

But until they launch later in the year, we’re simply left with the XA2 Ultra in all its cumbersome glory.

Picasso htc u11 eyes vs sony xperia xa2 ultra desire 826

Weighing a little less than 8 ounces and measuring 6. Although Sony’s 6-inch display may seem more manageable on paper than the 6.

This is not a phone most of us could ever hope to use one-handed. The XA2 Ultra is clearly a product of Sony’s outgoing expression of design: thick bezels, sharp corners and absolutely no personality whatsoever.

The materials don’t help the cause, either. Sony relied on metal along the perimeter and plastic for the back.

It has the appearance of aluminum, which I suppose is better than not, and enough middling budget phones with metal bodies have passed through my hands to the point where the plastic actually doesn’t offend me much.

It probably keeps the XA2 Ultra from being even more overweight than it already is, so that’s good.

But aside from the headphone jack, Sony’s signature hardware camera button, and the aforementioned fingerprint sensor, there’s absolutely nothing noteworthy about the XA2’s Ultra design.

It isn’t even water resistant. Although the resolution is a bit low considering the display’s size, the Xperia’s panel more than makes up for that shortcoming with excellent outdoor visibility and proper color calibration.

The brightness impressed us the most. That’s even better than the iPhone Xwith its nit max. The Xperia’s hues are spot-on too, with a Delta-E accuracy rating of 0.

Numbers closer to 0 are better.

The edge sense has a future. Asus Zenfone 4 ZE554KL Dual Sim 5.5quot Smart Phone The materials don’t help the cause, either.

The XA2 reproduced This mode gives saturation a little lift, but doesn’t boost it as much as the Super Vivid setting, so I find it to be a nice middle ground.

Like so many smartphones today, the XA2 Ultra has dual lenses — though they aren’t located where you’d expect them. Above the screen are a pair of and 8-megapixel front cameras.

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Unlike so many multi-lens setups, they strangely can’t be used for portraits with bokeh effects, although they do allow you to switch perspectives on the fly.

The main MP sensor features optical image stabilization and employs a narrow perspective, while the secondary shooter has a degree field of view, making it ideal for group shots.

Selfies on the XA2 Ultra appeared a fair bit sharper with stronger contrast than those taken on one of our favorite midrange phones for photography, HTC’s U11 Life.

Posted 15 hours ago — By Christian de Looper. Htc u11 eyes vs sony xperia xa2 ultra Allows app installs on the device’s external storage. It probably keeps the XA2 Ultra from being even more overweight than it already is, so that’s good.

However, the Xperia’s increased saturation gave my face a splotchy skin tone that I could have done without. It was a nice stylistic element missing from HTC’s rendition.

But the XA2 Ultra really demonstrated the worth of its front-facing array in low light, when its flash came into effect. Sony’s phone produced a brighter, crisper shot in our dimly lit video studio compared to the U11 Life, which has no flash and had to rely on heavy post-processing and smoothing to achieve a comparable result.

Again, though, I must complain about the XA2 Ultra’s lighting and color balancing, which painted pink shadows under my eyes, as if I hadn’t slept for a week.

For one last selfie test, I grabbed my colleague Henry for a quick comparison between the normal and wide-angle lenses on Sony’s handset.

The perspective on the secondary camera provided a nice change of pace from the selfies you get from most phones, and helps you include more people in the shot when necessary or capture more of the background.

Images taken in this mode also automatically employ a wider aspect ratio, so all that extra content in the frame doesn’t go to waste.

The U11 Life outperformed Sony’s best efforts across the board. This was particularly noticeable in the leaves of the plant, which lacked texture on the Xperia.

The situation didn’t improve when we ventured into Bryant Park, which was coated in snow after yet another nor’easter. The XA2 Ultra failed to capture the green of the umbrellas and the pastel tones of the chairs, while the plants toward the left edge of the frame were completely underexposed.

Mercifully, the Xperia clawed back some credibility in this final shot, thanks in large part to much better lighting.

However, zooming in revealed many familiar pitfalls.

Everything from the imperfections in the surface of Gertrude Stein’s statue, to the sign in front and even the tree trunk was smoothed over. The is no slouch, and likely able to satisfy most users’ needs with a strong enough performance for everything but the most demanding games.

20.01.2020 – What makes the HTC U11 really unique is its Edge Sense feature, which allows you to perform certain functions by squeezing the phone either softly or firmly. A monster 3,mAh battery cell is on board to keep both the device lights on. Posted 16 hours ago — By Kaitlyn Gilles. Images taken in this mode also automatically employ a wider aspect ratio, so all that extra content in the frame doesn’t go to waste.

But given what some comparably priced phones are packing, it’s not the best value out there. Sony’s phone delivered a multicore Geekbench 4 result of 4, compared with 4, for the Motorola and 4, for HTC’s offering.

Graphics performance was very close as well.

Weighing a little less than 8 ounces and measuring 6. Htc u11 eyes vs sony xperia xa2 ultra Like most of the latest smartphones, it is IP67 certified device. The Qualcomm’s Octa-core Snapdragon SoC is powering the device with performance cores maximum clocking speed of 2.

That’s decently sized, but considerably smaller than what you find in other big handsets, like Asus’ 5,mAh ZenFone 4 Max. Thankfully, the XA2 Ultra still delivered lengthy performance on a charge, clocking in our battery test, which consists of endlessly streaming websites over T-Mobile’s LTE network.

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It’s a strong result, no doubt, and good enough to land the XA2 Ultra in our top 10 longest-lasting phones. However, we wish Sony pulled it off with a battery that was quicker to charge.

A drained XA2 Ultra reached just 19 percent after 15 minutes of charging using the stock wall adapter. It hit 30 percent after 30 minutes, and 56 percent at the end of a full hour.

The fastest-charging devices can almost completely top off their batteries in the same amount of time it takes Sony’s to cross the halfway mark, so some form of quick-charging support would have really gone a long way here.

The XA2 Ultra comes with Android 8. And while it’s not the newer Android 8. However, Sony’s approach to Oreo seems a bit stale compared with the competition’s.

That’s mostly because the company has been running the same interface on its Android phones dating back to the Marshmallow days, without any significant visual or functional changes.

≫ HTC U11 Plus vs Sony Xperia XZ2 | Smartphone comparison

Granted, the Xperia flavor of Android has always been a relatively light touch on stock Android, and it isn’t anywhere near as drastic as Samsung’s or Huawei’s tweaks.

Under the hood, everything you expect in Google’s sandwich cookie-inspired OS is still there, like notification dots, picture-in-picture and contextual actions for highlighted text.

Indeed, this is Oreo — even if it doesn’t look the part. Sony is still committed to its own suite of media apps and branding exercises you’ll probably never use, like the Xperia Lounge.

There you’ll find apps, content and themes curated by the company, many of which are already accessible in the Google Play Store.

Aside from a bright screen and the latest major revision of Android, there’s very little the Xperia XA2 Ultra does that would compel you to choose it over its competitors.

Other devices simply promise more for the money. These are two well-rounded handsets that are just about as powerful as the XA2 Ultra where it counts, except they feature modern designs and feature-packed dual lenses.

Like a troubling number of Sony’s handsets lately, the Xperia XA2 Ultra is simply too expensive given how dated it feels. And until the company can figure out a way to turn that around, it’s going to be very hard to recommend its smartphones.

Tom’s Guide.

CES Video. Home Reviews. Our Verdict An incredibly bright screen and Android Oreo aren’t enough to make Sony’s bulky midrange phone worth its steep price tag.

For Super-bright screen Solid performance Android Oreo. Against Disappointing camera Slow to charge Expensive Chunky design. What does the Xperia XA2 cost?