James Bond is famous for guns, girls and getting about with the best gadgets that Q-Branch has to offer. Bond is saddled with the Xperia TX in the latest instalment of the spy saga, but does this phone deserve to be at the gentlemen spy’s side? We go hands-on.
Here are the headlines for the Xperia TX (also known as the Xperia TL and the Xperia T internationally): it’s an Android smartphone with a 4.6-inch, 1280×720 screen running at 323 ppi. It has a dual-core 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and a 13-megapixel camera.
All that power is packed into a smart black body with a sexy curved back, which looks about as amazing as the girls our hero cavorts with on-screen. It comes complete with a rubbery finish and ultra-thin buttons that adorn the corners of the device like smart cufflinks on a fashionable suit.
Disappointingly, Sony has made the decision to saddle the Xperia TX with Android 4.0.4. Jelly Bean has been out for months now, how hard is it to throw a 4.1 Jelly Bean image at this device? On top of all this, Sony is notorious now for falling behind with updating its devices after they ship, so there’s a possibility the TX will never get Jelly Bean, despite being a flagship handset. Sony keep promising to do better with their update program, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
Mind you, it could have been a lot worse with the Xperia TX. The Xperia go shipped with Android 2.3, after all.
On a more positive note, the screen brightness of the Xperia TX is really something to behold. Whites are crisp like lightning and the blacks are beautifully deep. Sony’s Xperia UI relies on the screen being able to display the difference between black and slate grey. The TX delivers and makes the interface look sleek and professional like the world’s best spy would want.
There is a bit of lag in the software, though, and it’s lag that probably shouldn’t be there in a device of this spec. We’ll investigate that and report back when we bring the review.
Lastly, the Xperia TX is exclusive to Vodafone on a $50 plan, which means no 4G support. That’s sure to put some people off.
We’ll bring you our full review on the Xperia TX shortly.