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Sony Xperia L3 Review

Sony Xperia L3 - Affordable, classy, and great performance!

A Quick Introduction – Sony Xperia L3 Review

The Sony Xperia L3 is a pretty great affordable model. While it has some drawbacks, such as having out-dated software, slow charging, and a very basic build, it is well worth the price. Its dual-lens camera, the notch-free 5.7-inch screen, and good enough performance, the phone is one of the most practical models out there. While it is by no means a high-end model, it does have enough to make most buyers happy. The Sony Xperia L3 features a side-mounted fingerprint scanner and dual cameras. However, the latter does not have any wide-angle viewing or zooming capabilities. With 32GB of storage, the phone offers enough to satisfy most people. 

Sony Xperia L3 Review Back
Sony Xperia L3 Review Back

Performance and Software

The Sony Xperia L3 is powered by MediaTek Helio P22 – while a good enough options, it is not as great as the Snapdragon series. The phone has 3GB RAM. Although its features are great enough for a basic model, the phone’s GPU could do with some improvements. The 720p-grade screen here might struggle with high-resolution games and apps since it is not a Full HD model. Overall, the performance of the phone is decent enough, given its price range. Users might experience a minor lag. 

Coming to the software part of it, the Xperia L3 runs on Android 8.1 software and uses the Last-gen Sony UI. Neither the Android version nor the Sony interface is the latest used here. You will find the traditional home screens and an app drawer – basically a version of vanilla Android. You will have to get used to the page-scroll rather than the more recent single vertical scroll of apps.

Design

The Sony Xperia L3 has dimensions of 154 x 72 x 8.9mm. The back and the sides of the phone are made of plastic. This all-plastic phone as an 18:9 screen that looks and feels great. While it looks like glass, it is not. Although the phone is inexpensive, it does not look that way at all. Similar to many recent models, this phone supports the side fingerprint scanner as well. The same button also doubles as a power button. When you want to switch the screen off, you can use the actual power button located above the fingerprint scanner. Unfortunately, these arrangements lead to the volume controls being placed quite low, making it difficult to use. While the phone features a fingerprint scanner, it is not as quick to respond as the higher-end models. Interestingly, it is not as slow as the in-screen scanner of the Samsung Galaxy S10 either. 

Sony Xperia L3 Review
Sony Xperia L3 Review

Display Screen

The Sony Xperia L3 has a 5.7-inch 720 x 1440 LCD screen. While the maximum brightness is decent enough, the display customization is quite poor. Screen resolution is also pretty low at 1440 x 720 pixels. The result is that the fonts are not as clear and pixelation is quite clearly visible. You will not notice any sharpness is a display of the images. For better display, consider going with Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro.

At the same price range, this smartphone does not feature the brightest display either. You might have trouble watching videos or chatting if you are out in the sunlight. There are no color modes to choose from and don’t hold out high hopes for display controls. 

Battery Life

This model by Sony features a 3,300mAh battery and offers reasonable enough performance. This battery capacity is actually quite reliable for a phone with the kind of resolution the Xperia L3 has. Using the phone at maximum brightness will lose you less than 20% charge in 90 minutes. While some models do better, such as, Samsung Galaxy Note10 Plus (these are also priced considerably higher!), but this is not so bad either. Users can easily use this for a full day at one charge. This could include audio streaming, video streaming, usage of messenger apps, and listening to some music. While it offers a solid battery life, it is nothing stunning and is available in almost all phones in this class. 

By most standards, the Sony Xperia L3’s charging is quite slow as well. There is no fast charger that comes with this model either. Many users have used fast charger adapters to speed up the charging, but it doesn’t work that way. The reason behind this is that most fast charging phones use Qualcomm’s fast charge standards. This phone, however, uses MediaTek. One full charge can take you several hours to complete. It might be a good idea to plug it in at night. One thing that might please is that it comes with a USB-C port instead of the older model of a micro USB port. 

Camera

The Sony Xperia L3 phone features a 13MP with a 2MP depth sensor and an 8MP selfie camera on the front. There is no Auto HDR processing and the phone offers very limited video features. Regarding the camera quality of this phone, you can expect a vivid sharpness and detail of the images. Daylight photographs will come out better and sharper. On the downside, there is no Auto HDR mode and the images are vulnerable to overexposure. This could lead to some parts of the images becoming white blocks. 

Sony Xperia L3 Camera Review
Sony Xperia L3 Camera Review

The HDR mode is not very great and is quite slow. Since Sony has still not incorporated a decent enough Auto HDR software, the phone seems quite outdated. The preview images could be improved as well since they don’t come out very well on bright days, due to limited screen brightness. As with most smartphone models in this range, the night time image quality is not as great either. While Sony claims that the phone has an f/2.2 lens, but according to the EXIF data, it looks like it is only an f/2.8 aperture. 

Conclusion – Sony Xperia L3 Review

The Sony Xperia L3 is a decent phone in its class. Although it has a poor battery and many of its offerings are out-dated, it has a reasonably good camera and good performance for regular use. 

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Shilpa

With an experience of over 7 years in writing and translations, I combine my love of technology with writing. I love checking out new apps and smart electronics on the market, trying them out, and of course, writing about them!

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