Sony Xperia XA Ultra hands-on, first impressions

Sony Philippines quietly released the Xperia Xa Ultra last week. This bigger version of the Xperia XA series features a 6-inch full HD display and a slightly better internal hardware compared to its smaller siblings.

The Xperia XA Ultra can be considered a successor of the highly popular Xperia C5 Ultra from last year. In fact, it took a lot of the main features and improved on them.

The design is characteristically very similar to the C5 Ultra and the new Xperia XA (read our review here) but with a more polished finish.

The front panel is completely covered in glass with a slight beveled edges that’s wrapped with a smooth metallic frame. The edges a bit rounded so it’s easier to hold with one hand. The on screen buttons are present with the typical Home, Back and Recent Apps list.

The power button on the right side used the old design with a circular metal knob. Just below that is the volume rocker and flushed at the bottom end is the dedicated camera shutter button.

On the left side is the SIM card and microSD card slots. Up top is the 3.5mm audio port and noise-canceling mic and at the bottom is the speakers, primary mic and micro USB charging port.

The back panel comes in a smooth polycarbonate material with a smooth matte finish, a departure from the glossy finish of the old C5 Ultra.

The Xperia XA Ultra takes the cake in terms of mobile photography with a 21.5MP rear camera that features hybrid autofocus and a large 16-megapixel selfie camera with optical image stabilization, HDR and LED flash. That’s a lot of attention given to the front camera so we’re going to put more focus on that feature in our full review later this week.

Sony uses a Helio P10 chip for the XA Ultra which we’d consider a mid-range processor that consists of 8 cores with 4 cores per cluster. The high-performance cluster runs at a maximum clock speed of 2.0GHz while the battery-optimal cluster runs at 1.15GHz.

Our initial benchmark results showed a score of 44,900 points on Antutu. That’s only a bit better than the 42k score of the C5 Ultra from last year.

It’s interesting to note though that the XA Ultra only comes with 2,700mAh of battery. It’s better than the 2,300mAh of the Xperia XA but a bit lower than the 2,930mAh of the C5 Ultra from last year. While Sony claims it can last close to two days on optimal use, we’ll have to run this thru our standard battery benchmarks in order to see the actual results. More on this in our full review later this week.

The Sony Xperia XA Ultra is now in stores with a suggested retail price of Php21,290USD 363INR 30,756EUR 346CNY 2,642 and available in either black, white and gold colors.

Sony Xperia XA Ultra specs:
6-inch Full HD IPS display, 1920×1080 pixels
MediaTek MT6755 Helio P10 2.0GHz CPU
ARM Cortex-A53 processor
Mali-T860MP2 GPU
3GB RAM
16GB internal storage
microSD up to 128GB
21.5MP Hybrid AF rear camera, f2.4 w/ LED flash
16MP front camera w/ OIS, LED flash
Single/Dual-SIM
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.1
NFC
GPS, A-GPS
FM Radio
2,700mAh battery
Android 6.0 Marshmallow
164 x 79 x 8.4mm (dimensions)
202 grams (weight)
Black, White, and Gold colors