Sony Xperia Sola

Xperia Sola :
Doesn't have secondary camera
Doesn't have transperant white strip

Xperia U:
Doesn't have Memory card slot
Doesn't have Magical touch

What a mess:-(

I read a comnt whr a guy said he his phone stopped responding and he had to wait for battery to drain since the battery isnt removable.

Press and hold both the volume up key and the power
key for five seconds.
After your phone vibrates once, release the keys. The phone restarts automatically.

Yes, i am an ericsson fan and i have had 3 walkman phones before the sola.
The fone that i had before the sola was w995.
Got this phone 6 hrs ago (yup! once again flipkart didnt fail to astonish me ).
Charged it for 5 hrs to condition the battery.
LOOKS : better than what it looks in the picture. the rear is a rubberish type so scratches can be avoided...

Touch:Yup,the floating touch lives upto its expections.
Speed: Dual core CPU,IT IS LIGHTNING FAST!!!Tried a few challenging apps and games, they work flawless.

NFC: got two smart tags (red and black)...red one is home and black one is bed ( i dont know if the names can be changed,i will try that later)

Cam: Neutral! cant say its awesome, cant say its bad..OK type

sound quality : over the speakers - volume is good.Quality is flat.i.e lacks the warmth and depth that my w995 provdies over its unbeatable stereo speakers.
if w995 gets 10/10 for sound, then sola gets 6.5/10
over Earphones - awesome!! bass is superb (bassheads will love it!)!people looking for sound stage depth, maybe slightly disappointed.although yes,the equilizer is completely tweakable for one's likes.3d surround is a huge plus provided u have earfones that have good soundstage (i used klipsch S4 and audio technica ATHM50)
Xloud? I just belive its a marketing title! if u switch it off,the sound falls below 30% (now no phone has that low volume)
Anyways,OVerall, 9/10.

Battery: since its been just 5 hrs, cant really comment! but I believe the engineers at sony are not that foolish to power this beast with such a weak battery as many claim!there must be a reason behind it something only the "SONY" people know..and others.......JUST TALK!!!

I have been using this phone for the past week or so. When I review a phone I look at the usability, its performance and efficiency along with music quality. Here are the things I found out while using this phone

Performance - For a mid range smartphone, this phone works pretty well. The animations are snappy and there is hardly any lag ever. Response time in starting applications and application performance is also quite good.

Usability - The customization over Android done by Sony is pretty neat. I like the minimalistic and sober approach, it makes a gadget look like a gadget. Nothing is overdone, nothing left out either. The blend is near perfect. Within a few taps you have access to pretty much everything.

Efficiency/Battery life - I use my phone for tethering and connecting to the Internet. Thus it recharges and it's hard to get a correct estimate, though when I did use it for a few days without tethering I found that with moderate usage the phone does get you through the day. I mostly use it for music and frequent browsing. It won't last two days on one charge but most smartphones don't anyway. Though the new Novathor chipset is supposed to consume 40-60% less power, still Sony could have done their customers a favour and kept a 1500 mAh battery instead of 1320 mAh. Still it's not a complete deal breaker.

Music Quality - Earlier I used to have a Nokia C7 and that had a very decent deep sound experience, here the sound is not as deep as that but it's a small difference, the volume is acceptable on earphones and the quality is decent, equalizers can help you make tweaks but being an audiophile I keep them flat, only ClearBass and SurroundSound suffice for me. Bass is nicer that way. Btw I use Sennheiser CX-300 noise isolation plugs, the experience on stock headphones is never a justification of the quality of the device.

Camera - I don't use my mobile for photography hence I am not too concerned with this but the shutter key is next to a failure, you need to press it really hard. Anyway images are average in normal light, daylight photos are decent. There's too much noise reduction and the colours are a bit washed out the look is akin to water colours a bit. There is no front camera and people rant about that a lot, I am not concerned about it, if that is a must have priority please don't buy Sola but don't rant either. There are plenty of options in the market, I agree had the front camera been there it might have been more complete but it's certainly not bad.

That leaves the floating touch and storage to be discussed. I don't really use the floating touch though it works fine most times than not. Also since you have an expandable card slot storage is not an issue.

Sola is currently running Gingerbread 2.3.7 and it's a nice experience at that, with ICS there will be significant performance improvements so the experience will most likely be better still. Hope this helps.

Xperia Sola, the latest in Sony's venture alone in the Mobile World. This is a device not to looked down on, it sports a dual core processor, which is the most power efficient dual core processor in the market now. Some people think that it is yet to prove it's power efficiency, well this device with a meager 1320mAH battery lasted 38hrs of testing.
This doesn't come with the iconic identity design, the translucent bar at the bottom, that the new NXT series comes with. But it has it's own "iconic identity", the floating display paired with the Sony developed Floating touch display, which detects your finger about 10mm above the screen.
Ofcourse if what you want is a cassic design like, the translucent color changing bar at the bottom then going for the Xperia U will be the better choice. but this phone, apart from the design area, beats the Xperia U hands down. Be it speed, touch detection, better browsing, anything, this phone is too good for the Xperia U. We, when testing the phone were quite surprised to find that the phone performed slightly better in the speed department, compared with the Xperia U even though they both have the same processor. It has NFC, which is rather useful, will be rather useful in the upcoming year or so, because NFC is catching up quite quickly.
There are places like battery life that the Xperia U wins, because of the smaller screen.(Xperia U gets upto 42hrs of battery life, 2days!!)And in the slightly better camera. We dont know why that is either, because they both have the same sensor(most likely to be the problem with the review unit).

All in all it is a very good device, but not having a removable battery is really a heart breaker, but not a deal breaker! It is good device to look out for. Just wait for some videos reviews, from Phonearena or iGyaan.
I am a reviewer, the device I got for testing was a prototype, so it doesnt exactly represent the"quality" of the final product but has all the same specs, so will not differ very highly.