Sony Xperia T2 Ultra review: The bigger, the better

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.

Sony Xperia T2 Ultra official pictures

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 disadvantages

• 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
• Relatively quiet audio output in the headphones

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.

Sony Xperia T2 Ultra live pictures

No one is perfect though and we know better than judge a gadget by its specs sheet alone. So enough talk, let's get our hands dirty.