If people are interested in the accessibility of this phone - which is very good - then please take the time to follow me on Twitter @grtdane where I write up my findings as I continue my exploration. We know Sony of its audio and video products so therefore I guess its no surprise to find audio and video coming at you the moment you get the phone out of its box, go through the start-up wizard with everything up and running. The first thing one notices are the two stereo speakers - one at each end on the front of the phone at opposite ends of the screen -, makes for stellar sound compared to what I’m used to with speakers on the bottom of phones. Each speaker looks like a small coin slot - typical of an earpiece speaker on a phone - but they go much louder than that. Going through the settings to perform a general setup and Tweak of the device I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the phone had been discovering things on my home network which is what its connected to, all my media devices were listed there - both Server and renderer - so it was just a matter of me setting rules for each device, allowing or denying the phone access and so on. A tap in the notifications area of the screen gives you access to your devices for streaming to and from, you also have the ability to “Cast” to compatible devices though I’ve stayed away from doing this for the time being, speech is also cast along with music and that’s not something I wish to do though I’m quite positive I’ll find a way around this given time. One can also gain access to the Phone itself as a media device from other equipment on your Network thus uploading music and videos and having them organised in the appropriate folders on the Phone is a snap and there’s no connection require to a computer or similar for file transfer. Bluetooth comes naturally with premium phones and the Sony Xperia X-Performance is no exception. The phone has the best implementation of Bluetooth I’ve come across for any mobile device. Many of you will be familiar with the 2 volume controls you get when pairing a Bluetooth device, a volume control on the Bluetooth device itself and one on the phone. The Sony integrates these controls into one so turning the volume down on the phone turns the volume down on the speaker with speech telling you what the percentage of the volume is as its changed, a nice touch but then again that’s the way a volume control should behave. I also was shocked to hear the Screen Reader tell me that my phone was now paired to an APTX device - the B&W is indeed a Bluetooth device able to handle APTX -, Sony have done their job well! So time to get down to business and listen to a range of files but I wasn’t at all surprised as all sounded as I expected them to though the one real surprised was that the Phone was able to handle DSD files without complaint. That’s all for now.
********** Those of a positive and enquiring frame of mind will leave the rest of the halfwits in this world behind.
