OS, Apps and UI
Sony skinned Android 5.0 Lollipop with their own customization and unlike Samsung or LG, it has little footprint and doesn’t differ much from stock Android. Most of the changes are just icons and the app drawer. Small apps are also available for use, which is great since you have a lot of screen real estate to work at.
There are a lot of pre-installed software. Some are Sony services, while others are third-party applications. If you don’t want them on your new device, you can easily uninstall them. Aside from that, Google services are also immediately available upon boot up.
The device’s operating system will jump to Android 6.0 Marshmallow early next year, if Sony will keep its promise. Anyhow, Lollipop doesn’t lack any feature to keep this thing running well.
Camera and Multimedia
Both the front and rear camera have 13-megapixel Exmor RS shooter with single LED flash. Whichever you use, you’ll get almost the same results.
The rear camera can snap quickly with good amount of details. Saturation levels are in check but exposure seems to struggle a bit sometimes. Here are some samples taken:
Compared to other smartphones, the rear camera is nothing new, but the front camera, that’s where the C5 Ultra gets the award. It produces identical results from the rear camera but with a wide-angle lens. Here are some selfies by the Mi Bunny:
Video quality is good. Both sensors can record up to 1080p @ 30fps. Continuous autofocus works fine, as well as exposure compensation. Digital stabilization is doing pretty good too, but not as smooth as optical stabilization. Check out a sample from the rear camera below:
As mentioned earlier, content sharing is the phablet’s core function. Viewing videos or photos on a large high-resolution display is definitely better than on any tiny, pixelated devices. The display does a pretty good job in delivering visuals, but the speaker? Not that much.
The device has two slits in front, giving the illusion of stereo speakers, yet the loudspeaker only fires from one side. The sound comes from the bottom slit of the device in portrait and it bugs us a bit when in landscape due to the fact that only the right (or left, depending on your orientation) side has audio. It makes us feel that we only have one functioning ear. On the brighter side, the loudspeaker can get strong and is able to fill in a small room.
I saw this in the mall. It looks great and build quality is ok. But why 18k for Mtek processor and 2G ram? That’s not gonna get you far! Before this year ends, with all the updates you sure will be receiving, those specs will fail you soon enough!