Sony Xperia XA review: Definitely not worth your money

The Xperia Z series is dead and from its ashes comes the brand new Xperia X lineup. The new devices have a new name, new look (relatively), new specs and a new direction. But are they any good?

Well, not really. Not if we’re going off this Xperia XA smartphone I have on review. A quick look at the internals will reveal that it’s a pretty basic device. An average processor with the bare minimum of RAM and internal storage really tells you where this smartphone belongs in the X’s hierarchy.

I want to like this device, I really do. But I simply can’t and it isn’t because the Sony Xperia XA gets one or two things wrong.

It’s because the Sony Xperia XA gets almost everything wrong.

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Sometimes it’s necessary to start over from scratch. Even if you’ve been working on a project for ages, sometimes it just doesn’t work and it’s better to just scrap everything and start over. I’ve done it before, even when I’m 70% of the way through a story. It’s tough, but the earlier your realise that what you’ve created just won’t work, the better. Ctrl+A, Delete and start over.

After the disaster that was Sony’s Xperia Z5 flagship smartphone, the Japanese company realised that the Xperia Z series was just not working. So, they ditched it and started from scratch with an “all new” direction. Unfortunately, it seems that old habits die hard and now we’ve got the Xperia X series.

Right off the bat, the X series — which in Malaysia means the X, XA and XA Ultra — seems to get one key feature absolutely wrong — the price. Take this Xperia XA for example.

The XA is pretty much an “entry-level” smartphone with a MediaTek Helio P10 processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. Couple that with the fact that everything is wrapped up in a plastic shell that looks like a knock-off Xperia Z device and you’d think this smartphone comes in at under RM1,000. But you’d be wrong and that’s exactly what’s wrong with the XA.

Seems a common theme then, with the Xperia X lineup — overpriced and uninspiring.

I hate to say this but the XA is probably one of the worst Helio P10 smartphones I’ve used, and I’ve used three of them back to back, all of them occupying a different segment of the market. One of it is much pricier coming in closer to RM2,000 while the other is a budget friendly sub-RM600 smartphone.

Do you know what both those devices share in common? They both outperform the Xperia XA in terms of smoothness and consistency. Keep in mind that both those smartphones have Full HD displays.

Battery life is awful too. Sony claims that the Xperia XA can last up to 2 days on a single charge of its 2,300 mAh battery. Maybe you can only achieve it with the XA’s Ultra STAMINA mode because my average on normal mode was about 2 hours of screen on time and I don’t think you need me to tell you that that’s bad. Awful, actually. About as awful as the XA’s single bottom firing speaker.

If it’s not performance, what are you paying for? Maybe it’s that 720p HD bezel-less display. It does look rather nice as the screen seems to bleed over the edge the way the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge’s does. It’s also reasonably sharp and pretty colour accurate from what I can tell. But 720p? Come on.

The camera then? A purpose-built 13MP Sony Exmor RS camera on the back should translate into some pretty fabulous snapshots right? Well, not exactly. It’s OK, but after checking with some of the other guys in the office, they agree that it’s quite bad considering the price. You can get a much better camera experience from something that’s almost half the price.

The XA’s camera is slow to launch, slow to snap and slow to focus accurately. Resulting images are quite muddy and lack detail especially in low light. One other annoying thing is that the camera is still placed too close to the edge. So if you’ve got fat fingers like me, you can end up with shots like these:

Oh and focus tracking is rubbish. It often locks onto the wrong subject (even the guy at the Sony launch had trouble demonstrating it to me). And if you do manage to lock onto that subject, say your subject crosses paths with another larger moving subject, the focus tracking will hop onto the larger subject instead.

OK, the XA is looking like a really bad buy at this point, and to be honest, I think it is. But, for the sake of fairness, this smartphone isn’t all bad. It feels pretty good in the hand with nice rounded edges and I like that they’ve kept the dedicated shutter button and shutter button-esque power button. And it is a handsome device.

Sony also made swapping SIMs easy with an easy-to-remove plastic flap that covers the dual SIM and microSD card slot. Don’t be fooled though, the XA is not waterproof.

After spending so much time with the handset, I still can’t quite figure out why this smartphone is so expensive. It doesn’t have impressive specs. It doesn’t have a great camera. Nor does it have a good battery life.

In Sony’s attempt to revamp one of their most iconic smartphone lineups, it seems that they’ve ended up making more mistakes with their new line of smartphones. I simply would not shell out RM1,199 for the Xperia XA and because of that, I can’t recommend this smartphone to you either.

You’ve got so many other options that are cheaper and perform better than this little Sony smartphone. If you want a good budget smartphone, do yourself a favour and go for something like the honor 5C or even the elusive Xiaomi Redmi Note 3.

But if you’re a die hard Sony fan and must have something from the Xperia X line, get the XA. It’s a much cheaper way to waste your money.

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Bonus selfie: