Friends+Design
- Very good build quality and a premium feel in the hand - even though it's a mid range device, it could pass for a flagship Xperia
- This is also a classic Sony design, and one that very much stands out from the crowd of standard gray rectangles (for better or worse)
- No fingerprint scanner
Software
- Close-to-stock Android interface, with added (and useful) stamina-branded battery-saving modes, and Sony's own multimedia apps
Performance
- Good performance, backed by the efficient Helio P20 chip (comparable to phones powered by the Snapdragon 625)
- Performance is good, but in terms of raw power, a step behind the best performing phones in this price bracket, which have a Snapdragon 820 processor or similar
Camera
- Very good, gigantic, edge to edge, 6-inch display - high maximum brightness and contrast, good outdoor legibility, and good color accuracy - the Xperia XA1 Ultra is tailor-made for the YouTube-watching, selfie-snapping, Insta-sharing crowd that have the phone in their hands all day
- Decent rear camera - good with details and dynamic range
- Good selfie camera - again captures lot of detail, has wide dynamic range and renders accurate colors, plus it's got the flash to (just barely) rescue shots in extremely low light
- The fact remains that phones this big remain a niche for now, and are certainly unwieldy to carry around - it is mainly targeted at a certain subset of users who want a device geared towards multimedia with decent cameras
- Mediocre video output from the primary camera - soft and lacking in detail - and no 4K video recording support either
Audio
- Good loudspeaker
- Good audio quality via audio jack too
Battery
- Solid, consistent battery life - lasts a day of moderate use - even though the battery capacity is not on the high end of the spectrum, the excellent efficiency comes courtesy of the efficient Helio P20 chipset, and the light skin
