Sony Xperia U review

The Sony Xperia U is the third of Sony's new wave of Android smartphones, using the same styling as the much larger Xperia S and the slightly largerXperia P.

The Sony Xperia U is the smallest of the three handsets, offering a 3.5-inch TFT display inside the same angular, black case as the Xperia S and Xperia P, and an odd transparent plastic strip acting as part design feature, part information panel and part silly light-up novelty.

Prices are relatively modest for a modern smartphone that says "Sony" on it, with the Xperia U popping up for around £169 on Pay As You Go or £215 SIM-free in the UK, or $340 SIM-free in the US. But can you really get the style of the Xperia S on a budget?

It's pretty close. The Sony Xperia U is small and solid, offering much the same in balance and build quality as last year's excellent Sony Xperia Ray, with Sony putting three capacitive touch buttons beneath the display, indicated by tiny silvery dots.

There's an explanatory icon embedded in the transparent strip, telling Android newcomers these buttons are, from left to right, Back, Home and Menu.

The touch areas are big and very sensitive to presses, meaning it's easy to use the phone without thinking too much about your actions or having to aim your button stabs.

The smaller 3.5-inch display makes the Sony Xperia U fit the hand well, so one-handed use is possible with ease, too.

Above the screen sits the front-facing VGA camera, which can be toggled and selected within the camera app, producing low-res images that emerge from the camera at 640 x 480 resolution.

There's also a proximity sensor up here so the phone knows if you're holding it to your head and can dim the screen accordingly.

The sides are black with rather flimsy and plasticky buttons, with the 3.5mm headphone jack up top and the USB connector top left.

The right-hand side of the Sony Xperia U is where the party starts, because this edge houses the power button, which is nice and easy to find at the top right, along with the volume up/down rocker in the middle, then the camera button bottom-right.

The chunky power button's easy to find and the physical camera shutter button is always a useful thing to have, especially since the latter brings up the camera app when held down for a second or two, even when the phone's in standby.

The camera button is quite flat and well recessed into the Sony Xperia U's case, meaning you have to press it pretty hard to make it focus and register. We tended to end up using the on-screen button to take shots instead, because it's just easier.

And there's your big, exciting design feature - the strip lights up. In more than one colour. It's quite cool, especially when viewing photos in the gallery, because the Sony Xperia U detects the most prominent colour in the shot, then alters the colour of this strip accordingly.

It's hard to take a photo of. The strip's much brighter and more colourful to the human eye, more so in the dark.

And if you're even more colour obsessed, the black plastic beneath the see-through strip can be unclipped and replaced with something brighter. White. Or Pink. Or yellow. Which is great, if you're a child.

Removing the back is a rather hard and worrying experience. You have to press it down and push it up, which means squeezing the phone quite tight and putting a lot of pressure on the display.

We were quite worried we'd end up breaking the display from the pressure. But we didn't. We should probably stop worrying so much.

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Inside the Sony Xperia U sits a full-size SIM card slot, although there's no SD support in here, so you're stuck with the relatively tight 4GB of accessible storage space Sony has put in here.

That's a bit of a shame, but at least the battery is replaceable, which will earn the Sony Xperia U some brownie points in this age of sealed, non-accessible phones.

All of this comes together to give the Sony Xperia U a quality, well-made feel, that does indeed ape the design of the high-end Sony Xperia S rather well.

It feels tough and durable, the display and buttons are sensitive, while the smaller 3.5-inch screen is bright and clear, so much so that it could be considered a worthy replacement for many bigger, more costly Android models

The Sony Xperia U arrives running Android 2.3.7, sporting the same Sony user interface skin we saw used to such great effect in the very pleasant Xperia S.

Not much happens on the lock screen, although if you're playing music you do see a little play/pause and skip section appear where the clock is, giving you some quick-access music control, which is handy.

However, given that the world has gone privacy mad, the lock screen does come with its own little settings screen, where you can dumb down the amount of stuff that appears in its notifications area, should you work in a place where your fellow employees are particularly nosy.

Pinching the display pops up Sony's overview mode, which breaks out all the widgets you have on your various home screens and pulls them together on the one screen.

Pressing one takes you to its screen. You'd probably be better off just scrolling to its screen in the first page, seeing as there are only five to manage here, but it's a nice enough little visual touch.

Open her up and you get those five home screens to play about with and populate with your own choice of widgets and icons.

A long-press anywhere on an empty bit of screen brings up the customisation window, from where you're able to add app shortcuts, interactive widgets, pick from a selection of pre-installed Sony visual themes or create folders to stick yet more app shortcuts in.

It's a very versatile system, with Sony adding the floating dock area to the editable space - plus it's possible to dump folders in that permanent bottom area, too.

As with more recent versions of Android, folders are created on the fly by simply dragging one icon on top of another.

Android famously supports widgets, the little live desktop apps that give you quick access to features, with Sony filling the Xperia U with some pretty clean and stylish custom widget options.

The software here's identical to that on the Sony Xperia S, so you get a weather widget that sort of unfolds to fill the screen, a miniature power bar/feature toggle that does the same, plus Sony's reworked social networking tools.

The Sony Xperia U dedicates an entire home screen to social networking out of the box (long-pressing on widgets enables you to remove them if you hate people), with the top widget pulling in a selection of your Facebook and Twitter friends, if you've signed in to the networks on the phone.

The lower widget is a specific timeline aggregator that has your big list of people rambling on.

It's still a front end to the familiar old Timescape system Sony's been putting on its Android phones since day one, although Timescape itself is more marginalised than ever.

Clicking Facebook and Twitter posts from the widget brings up their own little custom viewing window instead of Timescape, where you can reply to tweets without troubling a standalone app.

It's a nice-looking, functional widget we'd happily use, although scrolling and managing the little active window and settings on the Sony Xperia U's small screen can take some concentration. Plus it never feels like it's actually updating as regularly as it should.

This rather drab, marketing-led home screen also greets you upon initial boot, featuring a link to Sony's own video store, a shortcut that encourages you to download its Music Unlimited app, plus the useful Track ID system, which cleverly identifies tracks then enables you to buy them.

TrackID can stay, the rest are off into the waste basket.

And that's what happens when you long-press on a widget or icon and drag it up to that little integrated Facebook strip along the top.

If it's downloadable by others, the Sony Xperia U generates a status update, complete with a shortcut to the app's Play Store listing.

Handy for sharing things. Also handy for annoying people who don't care what apps you have on your telephone