Walk This Ray

A recent turn of good luck yielded me a 2011 Mini Pro from the good folks at SE, and the wife managed to upgrade her handset to the Xperia Ray. As she's a fan of the Mini, having owned the 2010 model, and I'm a fan of the Ray, we both readily opted to swap handsets. This should in no way detract from the little pocket-rocket that is the Mini; sporting a 5MP camera, 720p video and a 1GHz processor, it's no slouch. However the Ray suits someone like me down to the ground as it packs a better camera, more memory, a slimmer build and numerous other gadgety things more inclined for boys and their toys. Although saying all that the Ray is being marketed more towards females...hmmm.

Anyhoo, as I've previously stated, I've been impressed this year by the way SE have managed to cram everything from the Arc into the Neo (plus a little extra) and then shoehorned the contents of the Neo into the even smaller Ray, stripping out the almost non-essential things like the HDMI-out (be honest - how often have you used it?!) but still managing to deliver the same performance as the Arc and retaining the front-facing camera introduced with the Neo. The progression is staggering, even if there are some slight problems along the way with the design and UI in this particular model.

The minimalist design of the Ray is, well, fairly minimal, right down to it lacking a camera button. All the other handsets I've seen this year have one, so it's a little strange for it to be missing here; the touch screen is now the sole reliance for using the camera. It's a minor gripe really as I use the touch capture far more than I ever used the camera button on my other phone(s), simply because the button can be irritating at times!

The build quality is pretty good. Once again the matt finish utilised in the 2010 X10 series and on this years' Mini series tops everything off, giving a decent grip in the hand, which is useful as this is a super slim phone. Even if you have a penchant for uber-skinny jeans, you'll find the Ray is so sleek and slim it's barely noticeable in the pocket, which comes in very useful when smuggling the phone about to use it discretely i.e. in the office. Of course this does make it a little easier to misplace so top tip; don't put it on silent unless absolutely necessary!

I had some reservations with the size of the screen, which as it turns out weren't completely unfounded; having had the Arc and Neo this year already and been used to the acreage of their screens (in particular the 4.3in Arc screen), dropping to the Ray screen was a bit of a pickle initially. I use things like Swype for text input, which here has been replaced by a keypad similar to 'old fashioned' phones.

Having used touch screen input for a couple years, it wasn't that big an adjustment to make to switch back to standard T9 input, but I'll be honest and admit it did initially cause some minor frustration and the occasional profanity to erupt from behind clenched teeth. Swype is probably still available to use on this phone – I haven’t checked yet – but I would imagine the keyboard for this would be tiny!

Something else that's irked me, particularly with the Mini Pro and the Ray, is the bare minimum of MicroSD memory being provided with the handset; 2GB with the Mini Pro and 4GB with the Ray. To me that just doesn't seem enough, particularly for what I use the phone for, and for a phone offering high quality music playback (coming as it does with the excellent LiveSound earphones, at least on unbranded handsets), HD video capabilities and 8MP pictures, the minimum memory provided should be 8GB. I've beefed up the memory on the Ray to 16GB, so it now offers the same sort of space as my trusty (though ailing) iPod Touch. With this improvement the Ray is now something of a powerhouse handset that delivers pretty much everything I need from a media perspective.

I loaded Tron: Legacy onto the Ray and it looked pretty handsome; vivid colours, great sound reproduction. Tron: Legacy really gave the BRAVIA engine something to work on and it's a pretty impressive experience even on a smaller screen!

If I had any other real gripes it would be with the touch response on the screen; it's a little flaky at times. Not all the time, but it can miss a touch or two here and there, mainly when using pattern protection to unlock the phone. The home button has a nice semi circle of light around it, which also acts as a notification light, but the back and menu keys are just keys, they don't light up or anything. Call me fussy but I think it would have given the handset some extra oomph if they had. Again, it's a minor gripe over a design decision I had nothing to do with, one that really was probably driven by cramming so much into such a small handset, so something had to go!

In summary then, the Ray offers the same performance and virtually all the features of the Arc and Neo from earlier this year, while coming in at a lower price. Get the phone off network and chances are you'll get the excellent LiveSound earphones included, saving yourself RRP £60! It's an excellent handset and represents SE's 2011 progression and dedication to their craft in a stylish handset at a very decent price.  

Update: after tinkering with the keyboard input settings, T9 isn't the only input option, the standard Android keyboard is also available! And comes with Ericsson's version of Swype/gesture input, which ain't too shabby!