Sony’s Xperia Ion outperforms its rival, the HTC Sensation XL in terms of screen resolution, camera (it records in Full HD), it has a more powerful processor and a perfect design. The Sensation XL is the only one to feature Beats by Dr.Dre (Beats earphones and Beats audio driver). However, we recommend you to buy the Xperia Ion because of its more affordable price and because it has extra features which you’ll find very useful.
Displays, designs and sizes
Both smartphones have four buttons under their displays and these standard keys are found on many Android phones, but only the Xperia Ion has illuminating light under each one. Its appearance is distinct, the phone having a metallic back which confers a premium look. The Sensation XL has a plastic silver back with a thinner white matte stripe at the top and a wider one at the bottom. The Xperia Ion weights 144grams and measures 133x68x10.8mm, while the Sensation XL is almost 20grams heavier and it measures 132.5×70.7×9.9mm.
The display of the Xperia Ion is LED-backlit LCD, sized at 4.55inches, it supports 720x1280pixels and 323ppi and given the fact that it uses Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine, the viewing experience is significantly better. Plus, the screen has a scratch-resistant glass, so it will look as new for a long period of time. The HTC handset comes with a 4.7inches S-LCD display, which supports a lower resolution of 480x800pixels and only 199ppi.
Hardware and OS
The Xperia Ion is a winner in this section too, because it has a processor with two cores, while the HTC has a single core processor. The clock speed of Xperia Ion’s processor is 1.5GHz, being supported by the Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon chipset, which also hosts an Adreno 220 GPU, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, expandable up to 32GB.
The Sensation XL has a Scorpion processor clocked at 1.5GHz, a Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset, an older Adreno 205 GPU, 768MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, which doesn’t support expansion.
Cameras
Sony equipped the Xperia Ion with a powerful 12MP back camera with lots of useful features such as autofocus, LED flash, face and smile detection, touch focus, geo tagging, image stabilization and 3D sweep panorama, being capable of taking photos at 4000x3000pixels and recording videos at 1080p@30fps. There is also a 1.3MP front camera for video calling, which is also able to record at 720p@30fps.
The HTC Sensation XL has a common 8MP rear camera with autofocus, dual-LED flash, face detection, geo tagging, HDR, touch focus and auto-upload, and it captures images at a lower resolution of 3264x2448pixels, while the video recording capability has been set to 720p. The secondary camera has the same resolution as Xperia Ion’s front shooter.
Connectivity:
Both phones support WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, have WiFi hotspot and GPS. The Xperia Ion has DLNA and WiFi Direct capabilities, NFC and Bluetooth v2.1, A2DP and EDR, while the HTC model has Bluetooth v3.0 support and A2DP.
Batteries
The battery of the Xperia Ion is bigger, having a capacity of 1900mAh, but it’s non-removable. Though, with it you’re able to talk with your friends on 3G for only 4hours and on 2G for 10hours. Also, the battery lasts 400hours in stand by mode on 2G and 350hours on 3G.
HTC’s battery is Li-Ion 1600 mAh and it allows you to talk almost 7 hours on 3G and 12 hours on 2G, it lasts 360hours on stand by on 2G and 460hours on 3G.
Prices
The Xperia Ion costs 260 dollars and the HTC Sensation XL is 100 dollars more expensive.
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