Sony Xperia M4 Aqua review | Stuff

Slim benefits

Thanks to that glossy plastic plate on the back, you’ll want to pick your Sony Xperia M4 Aqua shade carefully. The pink one I’m using right now hardly shows up scratches at all, but I expect the black version will be a total scratch magnet.

The downside to the pink model is that it makes the back panel look a bit… tacked on. As ever, you pay your money and take your choice.

To live with, though, the Sony Xperia M4 is pretty easygoing. It’s slimmer and a bit less of a handful than the Motorola Moto G. The big bonus here, though, is water resistance.

The speaker, USB port and headphone jack are all designed not to let in water or dust despite looking totally normal, meaning only a pair of rubber-sealed flaps are needed, which cover the SIM and microSD slots.

As flaps you’ll generally leave in place 24/7, the Xperia M4 gets you the best kind of water resistance – the kind you can forget about. And as there’s a dedicated camera button on the side, it doesn’t become completely useless when wet (capacitive touchscreens don’t work properly underwater). For a phone of this class, it packs in a few neat extra bits. There is one annoying problem, though.

Sony packs in so many extra apps that the 8GB of storage is pretty much decimated as soon as you turn the phone on. You won’t get much more than 1GB to play with, which is closer to what you’d get from one of those shoestring phones that only come with 4GB memory.

While there is a microSD slot for music and pictures at least, it’s the apps and that will do you in. Install one high-end game and, bam, you’re done. Out of memory.

While some apps and games support microSD installs, you’ll have to root the device if you want to move all of your installed apps ot the microSD by default, which is an extra bit of hassle you’d probably rather do without.