Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V

  
Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V official pictures

The deadly Japan earthquake took lives and brought the local electronics industry to a halt. Sony was affected too and, with a shortage of 8 megapixel camera sensors looming, someone had to take the hit. That someone was the Xperia neo. This is the story told by a company insider, who we have no reason to doubt.

It's the same phone, different camera and the lower price makes sense. And it should be clear by now the V is the Roman numeral for five, not a letter. Could there be a victory sign anywhere in the picture?

Pros:

• Quad-band GSM /GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 3.7" 16M-color capacitive LED-backlit LCD touchscreen of FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels) on Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine
• Android OS v2.3.4 Gingerbread
• 1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset
• 512 MB RAM
• 5 MP autofocus camera, LED flash, geo-tagging, 3D Sweep Panorama
• 720p video @ 30fps, continuous autofocus with continuous autofocus and stereo sound
• Front facing VGA camera, video chat (Google, Skype)
• Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS
• microSD slot (32GB supported, 2GB card included)
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Voice dialing
• Adobe Flash 11 support
• microHDMI port
• Deep Xperia Facebook integration

Cons:

• Forced camera downgrade to 5MP
• Display has poor viewing angles
• The competition has dual-core CPUs, 1080p video
• No smart dialing
• Loudspeaker has below average performance
• Very limited video codec support
• Memory card slot under the battery cover

So, the Xperia Neo lives inside the Neo V. Patched up with band aid and mildly myopic but sill. The potential deal-breakers are identical, so if you had second thoughts about the original, you'll probably pass on this one too.