Sony Xperia T2 Ultra review

Introduction

From the company that's trying to have a smartphone for every pocket, taste, need and skill level - and is pretty much there in just a couple of generations - a midrange phablet should be anything but a surprise. The Sony Xperia T2 Ultra is only the second member of the Ultra lineup, trying to deliver the Xperia Z Ultra experience on a tighter budget. With hardly a manufacturer left that hasn't crossed the 6" boundary, Sony could definitely use a reinforcement to its phablet range.

The Xperia T2 Ultra, being a phablet, comes with a massive 6" IPS display of 720p resolution. A typical midranger, it is powered by the ubiquitous Snapdragon 400 chipset with four Cortex-A7 cores. In a pleasant turn of events, the Xperia T2 Ultra offers a better camera than its premium Z Ultra sibling - a 13MP Exmor RS sensor this time around, complete with a LED flash too. Nice!

So, a superior camera and a LED flash are welcome on a device that's easier to handle - the Xperia Z Ultra was just shy of a tablet and these aren't exactly a photographer's first choice. Another thing that looks good about the T2, at least on paper, is the battery. Almost the exact same capacity as what the Z Ultra has, the 3,000mAh unit is powering a smaller screen this time around and of lower resolution. Sounds like better battery life - and we'll be curious to test.

But that will come in due time, now let's look closer at the Sony Xperia T2 Ultra's full specs.

Key Features

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support; 3G with 42Mbps HSPA; 150Mbps LTE

Optional Dual SIM

6.0" 16M-color 720p capacitive IPS Triluminos display (245ppi pixel density); Mobile BRAVIA engine 2

Android OS v4.3 Jelly Bean with custom UI, confirmed for KitKat update

Quad-core 1.4GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, Adreno 305 GPU, 1GB RAM; Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset

13MP autofocus camera with geo-tagging, HDR

1080p video recording @ 30fps, continuous autofocus and stereo sound

1.1MP front-facing camera, 720p video recording

Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA; Wireless TV out

GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS

8GB of built-in storage; microSD card slot

MHL-enabled microUSB port

Bluetooth v4.0

NFC

Standard 3.5 mm audio jack

Accelerometer and proximity sensor

Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic

Ample 3000 mAh battery

Main disadvantage

Not as slim as the Z Ultra

Non user-replaceable battery

No water or dust proofing

No proper video and audio playback decoders (DivX, AC3) out of the box

If you are interested in the Xperia T2 Ultra, you are not worried about size and weight - and you are probably just in it for the screen diagonal. The T2 is a little easier to handle than the 6.4" Z Ultra but it hasn't lost the that premium feel due to the added fat around the waistline. On the outside, the device looks almost the same as the Z Ultra but the dust and water protection are gone.

Getting a video player to suit your taste and needs off the Play Store has always been an option if the default app doesn't cut it, but it's a shame really to see effort wasted. Poor codec support has almost ruined the otherwise quite feature-rich Movies app.