Sony Xperia neo L

The Sony Xperia neo L is a mid-range Android smartphone designed, developed and manufactured by Sony Mobile Communications. The Xperia neo L as first announced in March 2012 and was released in June 2012. The Xperia neo L was first made available in China and was later on released globally.

Design
The Sony Xperia neo L has a similar design with its predecessors Sony Ericsson Xperia neo and Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V. It has a slightly elongated body with a glossy plastic finish. However, the Xperia neo L features a larger screen and is heavier than its predecessors.

The Sony Xperia neo L has a 4-inch display; there are four physical keys and a "Xperia" logo on the lower bezel of the screen while there is a "Sony" logo, an earpiece, a front-facing camera and sensors on the upper bezel of the screen. On the side frame; there is a microUSB port at the left, there is a volume rocker and a power button at the right, there is a 3.5 mm headphone jack at the top and there is a microphone and a groove to remove the back cover at the bottom. The camera, the speaker and the LED flash are located at the back along with the "Xperia" logo and the liquid energy logo of the Ericsson.

The Sony Xperia neo L is available in black and white. It measures 121 mm × 61.1 mm × 12.2 mm and weighs 131.5 grams.

Hardware
The Sony Xperia neo L features a 4-inch LED-backlit LCD screen with a resolution of 480 × 854 pixels and a pixel density of 245 ppi. The device has a 5 megapixel rear camera capable of taking 720p HD videos at 30 fps and it also features a VGA front-facing camera for video calling. The Xperia neo L comes with Qualcomm MlSM8255 Snapdragon SoC with 1 GHz Scorpion CPU and Adreno 205 GPU. There is also 512 MB of RAM and 1 GB of internal storage with 380 MB available to the user; the internal storage is expandable up to 32 GB with microSD cards.

Software
The Sony Xperia neo L runs on Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich with Sony's custom interface with additional applications such as Walkman and additional features such as Overview which were present on older Sony smartphones such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. Several Google applications (such as Google Play, Google search (with voice), Google Maps and Google Talk) already come preloaded. The Xperia neo L is also DLNA certified.

Reception
The Sony Xperia neo L received mixed reviews.

Gadgets360 reviewed the Sony Xperia neo L, giving it 3 points out of 5. The audio quality was praised but the physical buttons under the display was criticized. Battery life and Android Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box were considered as the pros while the build quality and lack of tap to focus were considered as the cons of the device.

GSMArena reviewed the Sony Xperia neo L and considered it as a "decent" phone. Audio quality and the camera image quality were praised. However; the viewing angles of the display and the back cover were criticized, and it was stated that the video recording wasn't very good

Victor H. from PhoneArena reviewed the Sony Xperia neo L and gave it 6 points out of 10. He praised the display and the battery life but criticized the build quality, lack of oleophobic coating on the display, poor viewing angles of the display and the camera quality. He concluded that the Xperia neo L had a very good display for the class but the camera quality and the performance were "the possible dealbreakers".