Slim and light, decent processor, waterproof and dust resistant, good battery life, 4G
Distinctive styling won’t be for everyone, poor internal storage, middling camera
Like all great superheroes there's a clue to Sony's Xperia M4 Aqua's special power in its name. It's selling point is that it's waterproof -- but is that enough to distinguish this mid-range smartphone?
Design and screen
The M4 Aqua is an Xperia device through and through, with slim, rectangular and somewhat austere design cues we've seen on the much more expensive Z3 and others. The phone is also in posession of the Xperia range's distinctively large and circular power/sleep button on the side, with toughened glass front and back.
The 5-inch screen isn't full HD (one of many compromises made to get the M4 Aqua down to a pocket-friendly price) but it offers standard HD resolution of 1,280x720 pixels (293ppi). This is suitable for everyday tasks, particularly if your phone is primarily a communication tool, but it won't impress if you are into photo editing or spend a lot of time watching videos.
Sony claims that just like other Xperia phones, the M4 Aqua is waterproof. It is fully protected against will protect against dust, but its waterproof rating will only stand up to rain and jet spray. You'll probably be okay taking it into the shower (if you must) but we wouldn't recommend dipping it in the bath.
Battery
It's good to see that the M4 Aqua's microUSB power point doesn't have a cover, which saves fiddling about when you need to charge up at the end of every other day. Battery life put in a good show, comfortably managing around two days of steady use.
Software and processor
The M4 Aqua is running a Sony-tweaked version of Android 5.0 Lollipop and the 64-bit octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm MSM8939 processor is backed by 2GB RAM. Combined, these serve the phone well, since it's nippy and swift in operation, with no obvious signs of lag even when running a handful of apps at once. Our AnTuTu benchmark test gave it a score of 32,537, which puts it firmly at the higher end of mid-range territory, although far behind the high-end phones that like the HTC One M9, the LG G4 and the Samsung Galaxy S6 -- the best phones of 2016 so far.
Photography
The 13-megapixel camera on the back comes with autofocus and an LED flash, plus a few extra features like HDR, red-eye reduction and more. Sony's array of settings and tweaking options looks impressive, but picture quality's a bit of a let-down, with less detail than you might expect. Autofocus can be a little slow to react. It's possible to get some okay photos out of it, but you'll need to take some care with your light and your timing. The 5 megapixel camera on the front is no slouch though, and at least shows that Sony isn't oblivious to the rise of the selfie.
There's not a huge amount of memory on board -- just 8GB (and Sony does you no favours by packing the phone with bloatware), but you can add up to 128GB more via microSD card.
Conclusion
The Sony Xperia M4 Aqua is a solid mid-range, 4G-equipped phone that has certain benefits for outdoorsy and clumsy types, even if it's perhaps not quite as waterproof as its name implies. There's a decent processor on board but while the distinctive styling will be admired by some, it'll be hated by others. We'd like to have seen Sony be a little less stingy about on-board memory, especially in this day and age, and it's a shame the camera doesn't live up to Sony's usual high standards.
Software: Android 5.0 Lollipop
Processor: Octa-core 64-bit 1.5GHz Qualcomm MSM8939
Memory slot: Yes
Display: 5in HD, 1280x720 pixels
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1
Ports: microUSB, 3.5mm headphone jack
Camera: 13 megapixel with autofocus, Exmor RS sensor, LED flash; 5 megapixel front-facing camera
Video playback: 3GPP, MP4, Matroska, AVI, Xvid, WebM
Audio playback: MP3 (.mp3), 3GPP (.3gp), MP4 (.mp4, .m4a), SMF (.mid), WAV (.wav), OTA (.ota), Ogg vorbis (.ogg)
Radio: Yes
Battery: 2400mAh
Size: 145.5x72.6x7.3mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
