Sony is a brand – muckh like LG and Samsung – that’s known for far more than just their smartphones, but in the case of Sony their smartphones aren’t what you’d think about the Japanese firm first. Instead, people think of the PlayStation, great digital cameras as well as TVs when they think of Sony. Not one to give up however, the Japanese firm continues to launch smartphones under the “Xperia” moniker, and the Xperia X and Xperia XA – both announced during March’s Mobile World Congress – recently launched around the world. Today however, Sony is announcing a more budget-friendly handset, the Xperia E5.
Like other Xperia E smartphones that have gone before it, the Xperia E is powered by a MediaTek processor, this time the quad-core, 4G-capable MT6735, backed up by 1.5GB of RAM. It’s a 5.0-inch 1280 x 720 device with 16GB of onboard storage, with a microSD card slot that Sony says will support up to 200GB of storage. Right off the bat it’s clear that the Xperia E5 wasn’t designed to win any awards or anything, but with a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera as well as 5.0-megapixel front-facing camera, it’s got a lot of what people have come to expect from Sony devices, but likely at a much lower pricepoint. The Xperia E range has been available for a good few years now, and they’ve proven popular in parts of Europe as well as India, a market where Sony is particularly strong, even in the face of Samsung’s dominance.
Something that Sony is hoping will help set their latest budget device aside from the pack is some added software. The new “Smart Cleaner” feature will work away in the background to make sure that there are no apps or games taking up unwanted storage and such. This might sound like the sort of feature that is unnecessary on today’s high-end phones, on budget devices, the extra little boost in performance will be more than welcome to those on a budget. The Xperia E5 will be available towards the end of June this year and will hit Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America first.
