The Sony Xperia U is the baby of the newly-announced family from Sony but takes a lot of design cues from the more-expensive Xperia S. In essence the 3.5-inch device is a successor to the Xperia ray, which was released last year to great acclaim. Sony is one of the few companies that continues to build Android devices under 4-inches, and the Xperia U is a great example of a device that hits all the right notes without breaking the bank.

Is this the right entry-level phone for you? Let’s dive right in.

Specs:

- Android 2.3.7 with custom Sony overlay
- 3.5-inch 480×854 pixel LCD display
- 1Ghz dual-core NovaThor SoC with Mali-4ooMP GPU
- 512MB RAM / 4GB internal storage / 1.9GB app storage
- 5MP camera w/ flash, VGA front-facing camera
- 720p video capture
- WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1, A-GPS
- HSDPA 14.4Mbps / HSUPA 5.76Mbps
- 3G: 850/1900/2100Mhz, 2G:  850/900/1800/1900Mhz
- 112 x 54 x 12 mm
- 110g

Design & Display

There is no use avoiding it: the Xperia U isn’t likely to win any awards for thinness. In fact, at 12mm it is considered rather rotund by today’s standards. But, like the Xperia S, the frame manages to feel considerably smaller, owed to the intelligent design with a rounded back and sharp edges. That the phone is only 112mm tall and 54mm wide is a bonus, too, since despite its thickness it never feels oversized.

The Xperia U moves the power button to the top right side of the phone, with the volume rocker and camera shutter button spaced evenly below it. The buttons are small but maintain good travel, and are a pleasure to use. The matte black finish of the phone, from both the side and the back, is incredibly comfortable to hold and while the material attracts oil, smudging quickly, I found it easy to clean.

Like the Xperia S, the front of the U is defined by its light grid below the screen that doubles as an antenna mesh. The three capacitive touch buttons are above the light strip but appear far more responsive than its larger, more powerful kin. And this time Sony brought a neat parlour trick: the mesh grid glows different colours depending on the software colour scheme in use. This in addition to replaceable bottom portions (a pink one is included in the case) and you’ve got  a veritable modular phone.

The WXVGA screen is bright and colourful, but blacks are sadly grey and drab. Due to the small size, the 854×480 resolution results in a high 280ppi pixel density, so text looks sharp as a tack. Viewing angles are fantastic for a LCD display. Touch responsiveness was also very good on Android 2.3.7, arguably better than the Xperia S, which was a nice surprise. All told, you’re getting quite a nice little device for your $300. My only issue with the display was the lack of any oleophobic coating on the glass: it gets quickly smothered by fingerprints and requires regular wipedowns.

Performance

The ST-Ericsson NovaThor chipset is an interesting creature: its CPU is a pretty standard dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 built at 45nm, but its GPU is the Mali-400MP, the same one as the Galaxy S II. The clock speed is slightly slower — we’re looking at 1Ghz for the CPU and around 200Mhz for the GPU — but the reality is that we’re finally looking at a dual-core solution for $300.

Despite running Gingerbread, the phone flies through various home screens, apps and games. It scored a decent 66MFLOPS on Linpack multithreaded, in line with other dual-core solutions like Tegra 2, and an impressive 2248 on the updated (and more reliable) Quadrant Benchmark. In other words, this phone will play all the latest games with aplomb.

The only area of disappointment was the relatively anemic amount of RAM and internal storage — 512MB and 4GB respectively — severely limiting not only the number of background tasks the phone can handle but the media it can handle in the first place. Considering the Xperia U has no expandable memory slot, we were at least grateful that the 4GB was dedicated entirely to internal storage — there is an extra 1.8GB for apps.

As I said in the Xperia S review, Sony has optimized the heck out of Gingerbread and it shows here. Transitions are smooth; scrolling is butter; and, most importantly, even with 512MB RAM, apps never really seem to stutter or misbehave.

Software

The Xperia U runs a build of Gingerbread, Android 2.3.7, which has been heavily modified from its original incarnation. Most of these changes are for the better — you have the ability to drag-and-drop icons to create folders, for example — but it’s still a 19-month-old operating system, and the disadvantages to Ice Cream Sandwich are becoming more apparent every day. I say this time and time again: it is not OK to release phones with Gingerbread anymore, especially since the Xperia ray, this handset’s spiritual predecessor, just got upgraded.

Nevertheless, what you get on the Xperia U is a joy to use; the launcher snaps to attention, gliding around smoothly underneath your fingers. The customizable four-icon dock bar supports embedded folders, and the app drawer itself is fairly customizable. We missed the upgraded Google apps from Ice Cream Sandwich, Gmail especially, but Sony put its own magic touch on the Messaging and Music apps, while keeping others like the Gallery are kept stock Gingerbread.

The music app is particularly noteworthy because it integrates with Sony’s Music Unlimited service, which recently launched in Canada to compete with Slacker and Rdio — all Xperia U customers will receive a month of free service.

Like other recent Sony smartphones there are plenty of “value-added” apps on board, some of which could be construed as bloatware in the right circumstances. A full version of PopCap Games’ Plants vs Zombies is included, along with Sony mainstays TrackID, 3D Camera, and Timescape, which has been thankfully relegated to an independent app and widget combination.

Like a Rogers phone, the Fido-branded Xperia U is bundled with the company’s MyAccount, Shop, Ringtones and Ringbacks shortcuts which cannot be uninstalled or disabled. That being said, only four apps is a mercifully small number in this day and age.

Sony’s done a great job with the Xperia U keyboard — on such a narrow phone it’s typically hard to type in portrait mode but the autocorrect is functional enough to alleviate most concerns. I found it more comfortable to type in landscape mode, though, for which the 3.5-inch screen is well suited.

Camera

Like most Sony phones, the 5MP sensor produces good shots, but don’t come into the Xperia U expecting it to compare to the 12MP beast in the Xperia S. Rather, experience is just as good — you can wake up the phone by holding down the camera shutter button, which starts the Quick Shot mode — and the shutter is extremely quick.

Results were a mixed bag. Daylight photos had plenty of detail and some nice colour saturation, but dynamic range was pretty poor; the phone struggled to meter the right exposure. Macro was also quite disappointing: what looked like a clear photo on the small screen ended up being a homogenized blur. There was also a fair amount of softness around subjects, like the lens had trouble focusing on one object.

Sony’s camera software has proven to be some of the best on the market, though, and the interface provides one-touch access to most essential controls. Like the Xperia S you can take sweeping panoramas in both 2D and 3D (though you’ll need a 3D-capable monitor to view them) and the results were usually quite good.

The phone is capable of 720p video and, like the 5MP photos results varied depending on the lighting situation. On the plus side, video was smooth and sharp, and sound capture was surprisingly free of artifacts. Compared to the HTC One V, which retailers for roughly the same price, the Xperia U provides a compelling competitor — the burst mode on the One V is interesting, but Sony’s dedicated shutter button can’t be beaten.

Network Speeds, Call Quality & Media Consumption

The Xperia U is capped at 14.4Mbps in the downlink and 5.76Mbps in the uplink — a network speed demon this is not. But when benchmarking with Ookla’s Speedtest app, I was able to peak above 5Mbps down pretty consistently, which is a heck of a lot faster than I averaged with the Xperia S on the Rogers network. Perhaps the baseband inside the NovaThor chip is better tuned to Fido/Rogers than the Snapdragon S3, but whatever the reason I won’t complain.

As a phone, the Xperia U excels because it is compact and comfortable to hold for long periods of time. I enjoyed the time I spent talking on it, too: calls were loud, clear and distortion-free. The rear speaker, like most phone speakers, was anemic but passable.

Sound quality was also good from the headphone jack, and watching movies with the Bravia Engine turned on was a treat: the high pixel density and enveloping xLoud sound engine makes for an excellent audio-visual combination. While most media consumption is better suited for a larger device, I enjoyed watching an episode or two from Netflix.

Battery Life

The 1320mAh battery in the Xperia U is rated for around 6.5 hours of talk time, and we were able to eek a full day out of it on a regular basis. Like the Xperia S, the battery disappointed us to some degree since Gingerbread has been around for a long time and should be heavily optimized. The dual-core CPU is the likely culprit of the battery drain, but on average we hit around 12 hours of consistent usage from the Xperia U, not a bad number from a cell that size.

For most users, a day or light- to moderate use will be more than achievable.

Conclusions

The Xperia U is one of the best-performing low-cost Android smartphones around. Its dual-core CPU and quality GPU blows the single-core MSM8255 in the One V out of the water. Its sharp screen, decent network speeds and good camera quality complement one another.

While I hope that Ice Cream Sandwich will grace the Xperia U sooner than later, to the average consumer who is purchasing the device for $0 on a 3-year term or $300 outright, many of those great Android 4.0 features are already present.

Sony’s done a great job bringing a nop-notch product to the entry-level market, which makes things just a little more tricky when deciding which phone to buy. That, however, is never a bad thing for consumers.

When you look at the Naite it looks like any other Sony Ericsson device in design. So you can see that a great deal of thought went into creating this product to ensure the style was not compromised when making it green. The Naite is made from 70% recycled consumer plastics with the overall dimensions of 108.0 x 47.0 x 12.6 mm. So the length is a couple inches short of a standard gift card. When it comes to the weigh, the Naite is a measly 84 grams and you barely feel it in your hand, let alone your pocket.

The screen size is tiny at 2.2 inches (resolution of 240×320), but gets the job done. You have options to change the brightness settings and save your battery life – which makes the device even more green. Around the Naite you’ll see on the right hand side the volume rocker but missing is a 3.5mm headset jack. So to listen to your music (and charge the device) you’ll have to plug in the proprietary cable they provide. For the size of the Naite the keypad is actually nicely spaced out and you won’t have much trouble getting used to typing your text messages/e-mails. We did notice that the back light is a bit faded around the “s” so at night or in dark places it could be a challenge to see the letter. Nothing to be concerned about though.

You have all the standard features of a phone, such as contacts, calendar and phones. The call quality was good – people could hear us and we could hear others clearly. The Naite also has quick access to Facebook and Twitter, plus when you check out the video you’ll see they have also included in the applications feature tips on how to be green.

When it comes to other features, the 2 megapixel camera is probably the only thing I would improve on. The picture quality is good for taking quick pics and sending to your friends, but printing them will only come up pixelated. The Naite can take video and the quality again was a bit pixelated, but the sound quality rocked during the video test. This device also comes with an FM radio and video calling capabilities with it’s front facing camera. For the web experience it was as expected, no full HTML browser or WiFi but incredibly fast compared previous devices we’ve tested. Surfing the web is easy and viewing can only be done portrait view so the 2.2 inch display might take some getting used to. We checked out YouTube and streamed a video and found the video came up quickly, pixelated and the sound quality at full blast was muffled. Once I took it down a level it was perfectly clear. Realistically you’ll be listening to your music with your headphones. The Baite can also hold up to 8GB with a microSD card.

Again, I would have never picked Fido to be the green carrier but they’re doing a bang up job. The Naite can be yours for $25 on a 2-year contract or $150 no contract. You can check out the full review here

The Curve 8520 is a long-awaited new BlackBerry addition to the Fido lineup and comes with the new trackpad and a full QWERTY keyboard, HTML browser with WiFi, a 3.2-inch display (resolution of 320 × 240), 256 MB of Internal Memory, can hold up to 16GB with a microSD card, dedicated media keys, BlackBerry Maps, Speakerphone, IM, Bluetooth, 2.0 megapixel camera with 5X digital zoom and video capabilities. The overall dimensions are 109 x 60 x 13.9 mm with a total weight of 105 grams.

More here at Fido

The T715a is a slider with dimensions of 91.5 x 48 x 14.9 mm and weights in at 96.5 grams. The screen size is 2.2 inches with a resolution of 240 x 320 (QVGA) and has a 3.2 megapixel camera with video camera capabilities, Facebook app, Geo tagging of photos, Google Maps, SMS, MMS, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, IM, MP3 player, Bluetooth and Handsfree speakerphone.

More here at Fido

There is nothing truly different about the overall design of the iPhone, just faster and comes with more features. Comes in black and white and 16 GB or 32 GB models. This weighs a bit more and comes in at 135 grams, previous models weighed only 133 grams. This has a 3.5 inch display with a resolution of 480 x 320.

During this review we chose not to go into great detail of the entire iPhone, but only the key additions to the 3.0 operating system, such as the Voice Memo, Camera (auto-focus) and Video features (editing), compass, Cut Copy & Paste and Search.

What I really love about the iPhone is how incredibly easy it is to use. It has honestly been dumbed so far down any young child, even at the ripe age of 2 can pick this up and start using it.

Check out the review here: