Sony Xperia E4g packs 4G LTE and epic battery life on a budget
With a battery lasting two days -- and up to a week should you really try -- then if you're not living on the E4g you're taking up too much room.
It seems like only a couple of weeks ago that Sony revealed the Xperia E4 , a low-end 3G smartphone -- mainly because it was only a couple of weeks ago. Our main complaint was that the E4 didn't have 4G, and now that complaint has been answered with the Xperia E4g.
The E4g adds 4G LTE to the E4's basic specs for faster connection to the Internet, and manages to keep the E4's lung-busting battery life -- Sony promises the E4g will go two days without charging, and up to a week if you tweak the settings.
The E4g sports a 4.7-inch screen with a resolution of 960x540 pixels, which gives you 234 pixels per inch -- not a great deal of detail, and certainly not high definition when watching video, playing games or viewing pictures and websites.
In charge of events is a fairly low-key 1.5GHz MediaTek MT6732 quad-core processor backed up by a meagre 1GB of RAM. The camera is a 5-megapixel job that shoots 1080p high-definition video, with a 2-megapixel snapper on the front for video calling.
On board you get 8GB of storage: Sony says some of that is taken up by the phone's software, leaving you 4.8GB for movies and music and apps and snaps. That can be expanded with a memory card for an extra 32GB of leg room.
The E4g has Bluetooth 4.1 and NFC for pairing wirelessly with other devices, from headsets and headphones to smartwatches and speakers.
That epic two-day battery life comes courtesy of a 2,300mAh battery. To tease things out even more, one click activates a Battery Stamina Mode that shuts down power-hungry functions. Ultra Stamina Mode kills everything but the phone's most basic functions and can keep the battery ticking over for up to a week.
It's an Android phone, so you can transfer over your apps from your previous phone and buy new ones from Google Play or other Android-friendly app stores. To make things easy if you're not used to smartphones, your eyes struggle with small icons or you just like to declutter, Sony offers its Simple Home interface with larger icons and quick access to your favourite apps.
Some countries will get a dual-SIM version that allows you to switch between phone numbers in the same phone, even answering a call to one number while talking on the other. The first call gets put on hold instead of going to voicemail, which would have been the case with older dual-SIM phones.
We'll be getting our hands on the E4g and its lesser sibling the E4, as well as all of 2015's hottest new phones, tablets and wearables, at industry blow-out Mobile World Congress. Keep it CNET for the first photos, videos and hands-on first impressions of the year's coolest kit between now and the end of February.