Hands on: Sony Ericsson Xperia Active

What is it with Sony Ericsson and the unique designs of the phones! The Xperia Arc S walks the design path of

the phone it is succeeding. The Xperia Ray has one of the slimmest display sizes and now the Xperia Active.

From what we can understand, this phone is simply meant for the “look at me” crowd. Hence, it no wonder that

the phone comes with multiple colours of battery covers with the phone - one to match your wardrobe daily!

Moving beyond that, here is what we think about the Xperia Active:

The build of the phone is quite satisfactory, even though it is mostly plastic.

Needless to say, at 16.5mm, this phone is one of the fattest (or should we say thickest, to not annoy someone!)

around.

Multiple colour options for the battery cover remind of the time when Motorola used to offer the same with

one of their truly forgetful phone!

The 3-inch display has a nice crisp feel to the text rendered on it. Adequate brightness levels mean that even in

bright sunlight, reading that SMS will not be a problem.

The TimeScape UI in this phone is the one that we saw in the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini and the Xperia Mini

Pro, launched a few months back. It has the corner menus, but the widgets remain largely the same across the

TimeScape versions.

Just like the Xperia Ray, the Active also has a slim display. The fear that the on screen keypad wont work in

portrait mode was allayed very quickly. Despite the thin keys, the typing is a very precise activity, with literally no

spelling mistakes.

The charging port is hidden behind a cover. We don’t really think it is a very good idea to keep opening that

cover daily when charging the phone. Longevity will definitely suffer.

For its uniqueness, the Xperia Active is retailing for around Rs 19,000 in the market. From what we have

experienced in this short duration we have used the phone, this one definitely has a lot of uniqueness about

it. But beyond that, it might struggle to compete against the oomph value commanded by the Apple iPhone

3GS (yes, still!).

Stay tuned for a detailed review!

Rudz