Keyboard phones are slowly dropping out of fashion with the advent of newer and better on screen keyboard options. But there are still some people out there who prefer to have a physical keyboard. And Sony plays to this audience, providing the new Xperia SL with a full QWERTY keyboard as well as a pretty big screen.
That seems to be the major difference between the Xperia and Samsung’s latest offering, the Galaxy S III. Both phones are powerful, fast and sexy, but there are a few other differences that may tip the balance for you if you’re trying to decide between these two models.
Samsung’s Galaxy S III: The Best Phone on the Market?
The Galaxy S III is widely considered by experts to be the best smart phone currently on the market. And it does have some fine features. There isn’t much that the Galaxy can do better than the Xperia, however, since they’re fairly even in their specs.
The Galaxy does come with a Super AMOLED screen, which gives you a brighter, more vivid picture than Sony’s TFT LCD screen (although even this is better than the old LCD screens that many manufacturers are still offering).
It gets faster maximum data speeds- actually a massive twelve times faster. But this isn’t exactly how it seems. Sure, faster data speeds should mean that you get faster downloads, web page loading etc. In reality though, so many people’s data speeds are capped by their phone companies that this isn’t really the case.
The Samsung has a twenty per cent bigger screen, but is also about twenty per cent thinner and around ten per cent lighter.
The Xperia SL Holds its Own:
The Samsung’s advantages are kind of evened out by what the Sony does better though. Firstly, it has a twenty per cent faster processor, making it basically twenty per cent faster and more responsive.
It also has ten per cent more PPI (pixels per inch) effectively giving you ten per cent better quality and more clearly defined pictures. But the true joy in the Xperia is its camera. It has a whopping 12.1 MP camera, taking photos that are a full fifty per cent more detailed than the Samsung’s (still rather respectable) 8 MP cam. These are true high quality pictures.
Really Different But Equal
The choice between these two phones is really impossible. They’re both such great models.
Sure, the difference between a physical keyboard and an on screen keyboard will probably make the decision for most people automatically. And then there’s that camera on the Xperia. But if photography is truly your thing, then you probably already own a digital camera with better picture quality. And if photography is not your thing, then an 8 MP camera is still good enough quality that most people would be happy with it. It really does come down to different but equal.
One of these devices is not noticeably better than the other; they’re simply built for slightly different markets.
