Wednesday 1 February 2012

...And back to the Neo, just for a change!


After playing almost exclusively with the Ray and Arc S for well over 6 weeks, I thought it was about time the Neo had some more time in the spotlight.
 
A favourite handset of mine from last year, it was my primary handset from release in July until I managed to bag a Ray in early December, the longest I've managed to go with one particular handset since before I was invited into Test Lab! Kudos indeed, and not just because I was 'stuck' with it - I did have the Arc to play with as well!
 
Packing all the features of the Ray, plus an HDMI-out and a slightly bigger screen (though not as big as the Arc) the Neo has lost none of its charm. In fact in was a real pleasure to slip in the 16GB MicroSD card, update a couple apps/accounts and continue about my life with a change of handset. (Another beauty of Android and cloud services; if you keep your phone(s)/apps and contacts synced up to date, you grab a handset and go!)
 
I think it was a shame the Neo was effectively 'downgraded' from an 8 MP camera to a 5MP after the parts shortage following the crisis, as it really is a good little handset. Like I said before, I enjoy the solid feel of this phone; it's got some heft in the hand!
 
One of the minor foibles I had with this handset back in the beginning was with the small amount of RAM provided, a miserly 380MB compared to the (still stingy) 512MB of the Ray and Arc. A problem which has been corrected with the 1GB on the Xperia S.
 
Still, fixing this problem is a simple matter of rooting and clearing out non-essential bloatware - of which there is plenty. In addition to this you can 'supercharge' the handset by following my Test Lab colleague's guide to rooting AND supercharging HERE - the V6 script maximises the memory management offered by the Android OS and can really make a difference, especially when you're got a puny amount of RAM to play with.

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