In the endless sea of big phones coming close to the size of Tablet devices, it seems that the smaller phone devices don’t have much of a chance for competing with this trend of “Phablets” and the features that they promise. Until now…

The Sony Xperia X Compact is Sony’s latest attempt at producing a smaller device without making many compromises to the other ranges they have released, and at the same time trying to cater to the people who still prefer smaller phones. Yes, they exist, and quite frankly, I don’t blame them. I sometimes sigh in resignation when my phone doesn’t fully fit into my pocket or when I sit and it ends up digging into my hip area because of the awkward position. After spending a few days with the Sony Xperia X Compact, I must admit it was a refreshing change of pace, and I’m not talking only about the smaller size.

Featuring…

There are a lot of awesome features that this phone boasts. It sports better battery management systems and even has built-in software functions called “STAMINA Mode” and even “Ultra STAMINA mode” to prolong battery life by disabling certain other functions of the device that aren’t currently in use.

There’s another feature called “Battery Care” that increases the battery lifespan by controlling the speed at which the phone charges. I can see this being very useful, because when I first charged the device through the USB-C port that it now uses for charging and data transfer, the phone heated up quite a lot, and when it was done charging, relatively quickly at that, I felt the need to leave the phone for a while to cool down, fearing the worst (if you know what I mean).

The battery life is however very impressive. After extended uses, and even having several apps open in the background, the phone lasted as long as most of the newer smartphones. What impressed me the most was it’s standby discharge time. I once left the phone for 4 days without needing to charge it and it still had around 18% left.

The Compact X packs a screen resolution of 720×1280 pixels, and screen size of 4.6 inches. I’m sure this must be a rarity for many of you. It felt like a blast from the past for me. Quite hilarious to see how the size of the phone itself, being 129mm tall by 65mm long, is nearly the size of my iPhone screen size on it’s own. The pixel density is around 320 DPI, and it looks amazing, in my opinion. This is still taking into account the size of the phone. It has a lot of good features packed into it’s little plastic shell, which even though is prone to often having marks all over it from simply holding it, is still relatively comfortable.

The CPU is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 650, and is a Hexacore CPU, that works along a pretty good GPU as well (Adreno 510). The responsiveness on the device via the User Interface was stunningly smooth, and it could even keep up with the many music rhythm games I tried out on it to further test the processing capabilities.

“Keep it secret, keep it safe”

It also comes with the fingerprint scanner on the power button, which is truly an awesome feature to have on a phone, and I have not experienced a single issue with it. Here is an interesting fact, the fingerprint scanner capability has been deactivated in various regions of America, for reasons currently unknown, possibly due to some privacy law. And unfortunately this phone does not boast about it’s water- and dust-proof abilities.

You cannot use this phone to take any photos underwater, and you certainly might need to worry if you drop it in the wash-basin by accident. And whilst speaking about the camera; the targeted-tracking technology (as I call it) has been an impressive addition to the Sony phones, it promises to keep track of whatever you want the camera to focus on without the picture blurring.

Despite being able to test this feature out, the before-mentioned feature was unreliable in most instances. Many times when I tapped the screen to target an object, the square that focused on the object would sometimes disappear without warning. The image quality of the photos were great though.

Click here if you want to see more complicated specs (http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_x_compact-8292.php)

[review]

Conclusion

I really liked the overall look of the phone. It’s simple and elegant, and I liked that the beveled screen wasn’t “reaching” so far to the sides that I would accidentally hit icons and buttons I did not mean to. The phone has a lot of great features, as well as a few features that it is missing and that might need some work. I really like the phone, but wonder if it truly is worth the price it retails for, which is about R7300 from Vodacom.