Sony Xperia M4 Aqua: First Impressions

While we’re slightly disappointed that Sony didn’t announce the Xperia Z4 at MWC, it did at least bring along the Xperia M4 Aqua, a mid-range handset with a number of selling points, starting with its dust and water resistant shell and running through to its high spec camera and surprising amounts of power.

It certainly makes a good first impression, but does that impression last? Read on to find out.

Screen

The Sony Xperia M4 Aqua has a 5.0-inch 720 x 1280 IPS LCD display with a pixel density of 294 pixels per inch.

Let’s break that down. At 5.0 inches it’s fairly large, in fact it’s the same sort of size as most flagships, but not quite stretching into phablet territory. The problem with cheaper phones with large screens is that they tend not to have a high enough resolution to really support all that size, but the Xperia M4 Aqua doesn’t fare too badly there either.

It has a 720p screen, which is clearly nothing in comparison to the 1080p and QHD screens found on some phones, but it’s enough for a fairly sharp display and you won’t likely miss the extra pixels too much unless you put it side by side with a sharper phone.

As it uses IPS LCD technology it also has fairly good viewing angles, which isn’t normally a big deal on smartphones since they tend to be viewed square on anyway, but it’s handy on those rare occasions when you don’t.

Design

The Xperia M4 Aqua will look instantly familiar if you’ve seen any Sony handset made in the last few years, as like most of the firms other phones it has an angular OmniBalance design.

It’s clearly not a high end handset though, as there’s very little metal or glass here (other than the screen of course). Instead it has a plastic shell, but it’s solidly put together and has a little bit of metal in the form of the power button, which stands out against the otherwise plain design.

It’s also quite slim at just 7.3mm thick and as the name suggests it’s water (and dust) resistant, with an IP65/IP68 certification, meaning it can withstand being submerged up to 1.5 metres deep in fresh water for up to 30 minutes.

It’s not the most stylish phone around but it doesn’t look bad at all and with that extra protection you can feel safe taking it out in the rain.

Power

The Sony Xperia M4 Aqua is fairly powerful as mid-range phones go. It has a 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor, with four cores clocked at 1.5GHz and four at 1.0Ghz and that’s backed up by 2GB of RAM.

A year ago those would almost be flagship specs and surprisingly it’s actually Sony’s first 64-bit handset, so expect slick performance.

Camera

There’s a surprisingly high spec camera packed into Sony’s new mid-ranger too. The Xperia M4 Aqua has a 13 megapixel snapper on the back and a 5 megapixel one on the front, so it’s well-equipped for both selfies and more serious photography and as that front-facing camera has a wide-angle lens you can fit more into your pictures too.

The camera also has some fancy skills, like Superior Auto, which can recognise up to 52 scenarios and automatically adjust settings to best suit the scene. Along with all the camera apps Sony has included, like Sound photo- which lets you add audio to images, and Portrait retouch- which ensures you look your best in pictures, there’s a lot here.

Features

Aside from its waterproofing, which we’ve already covered, the biggest feature of the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua is perhaps the fact that it runs Android 5.0 Lollipop.

That’s the latest version of Android and it’s still fairly new, with many existing phones not yet upgraded to it, so it’s great to see the Xperia M4 Aqua run it out of the box.

It’s the slickest, most power efficient version of Google’s mobile OS yet, though don’t expect to get the stock version as Sony has put its own skin over the top, but it’s a fairly lightweight UI which doesn’t detract much from the core Lollipop experience.

Battery life, memory and connectivity

The Sony Xperia M4 Aqua has a 2400 mAh battery which Sony reckons can last for up to two days. More specifically it states that you’ll get up to 7 hours of video playback or 64 hours of music from it, while Ultra Stamina Mode can keep it going even longer when it’s running low.

There’s a choice of 8 or 16GB of built in storage along with a microSD card slot which supports cards of up to 32GB and the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua also supports Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC, which is a good selection for a mid-range phone.

Early verdict

The Sony Xperia M4 Aqua is shaping up to be an impressive mid-ranger, with a decent amount of power, a well-specced camera, a large and fairly high resolution display and long battery life, all wrapped up in a water and dust resistant package.

With an estimated price of around £218 it’s not likely to be overly expensive either for what you get. With 4G, NFC and Android 5.0 included it’s fairly well future-proofed too and while some things could be better (the build for one) overall it seems about as good as you could ever hope a phone would be at this price point, that is, assuming its processor, battery life and camera live up to their promise.

Sony Xperia M4 Aqua Specification

Dimensions : 145.5 x 72.6 x 7.3mm

Weight: 136g

Screen size: 5.0” (720 x 1280)

Screen Resolution: 720 x 1280 display resolution

Pixels Per Inch (PPI) : 294

Processor: 1.5GHz quad-core application processor

RAM: 2GB

On-board Memory: 8, 16GB (microSD card support)

Camera: 13MP (rear) 1080p@30fps, (5 megapixel front-facing)

Operating system: Android 5.0

Ultrafast / 3G / 4G LTE: Yes/ Yes/ Yes

Bluetooth / NFC : Yes/ Yes

Battery capacity: 2400mAh

Colours: Black, White, Coral

Launch Date: Spring
Price: 299 Euros (around £218)