The Sony Xperia M4 Aqua was released in June 2015 and with its specs it is still a very good mobile phone to have. You will note that its specs are good even one year later. Sony has always added good hardware to their Xperia range of mobile phones and the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua is no different.
Note that the E2306 has twice the amount of memory (16 GB) so ensure that you are buying what you expect. The Xperia M4 Aqua covers all three network bands from 2G, 3G as well as 4G. You will note that this has been listed below with the different versions of the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua mobile phone:
2G bands | GSM 850/900/1800/1900 |
3G bands | HSDPA 850/900/1900/2100 – E2303, E2353 |
HSDPA 850/900/1700/1900/2100 – E2306 | |
4G bands | LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 20(800) – E2303 |
LTE band 2(1900), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 12(700), 13(700), 17(700), 28(700) – E2306 | |
LTE band 1(2100), 3(1800), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 28(700), 40(2300) – E2353 |
The speed is pretty standard as far as mobile standards go with mid-range mobile phones. This includes the speeds which you would expect such as HSPA at 42.2/5.76 Mbps as well as LTE Cat4 at 150/50 Mbps. GPRS speeds are up to 107 kbps and EDGE is up to 296 kbps.
Much like other mobile phones in the Xperia range the size of the phone is 145.5 x 72.6 x 7.3 mm which fits well into your pocket. Its also not very heavy at 136 g which is about what mid-range mobile phones weight today on average. There is also a Nano-SIM in the phone and much like other mid-range as well as high-end mobile phones from the Xperia range it is IP68 certified. This means that the phone is dust and water proof up to 1.5 meter at 30 minutes. Most insurance claims today cover theft and water damage. This is one way to ensure that you do not deal with a water damaged mobile phone.
The screen is large and is covered with scratch-resistant glass. The screen is a IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with the standard 16M color ability. The phone has a large 5.0 inches (~65.2% screen-to-body ratio) screen. The resolution is that of a mid-range phone at 720 x 1280 pixels with a very average ~294 ppi pixel density. The screen is a multitouch with up to 4 fingers.
The CPU is an Octa-core (4×1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.0 GHz Cortex-A53) which uses the BIG-little combination CPU that allows for the slower A53 run the phone when power is not needed and then running on all of them when CPU power is needed, saving electricity and extending your mobile phone battery life. The GPU on the phone is an Adreno 405 based on the Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615 chipset using the Android OS, v5.0.1 (Lollipop), upgradable to v6.0.1 (Marshmallow) software as an operating system.
The phone has a microSD dedicated slot for up to 256 GB of additional storage outside of what it already has. The phone comes with a standard 8 GB storage space with 2 GB RAM (16 GB in the E2306) version. The camera is a 13 MP camera with autofocus as well as an LED flash. There are also the standard features which you will find in the mid-end phones being geo-tagging, touch focus, face/smile detection, HDR as well as panorama ability. The video ability is 1080p@30fps which is very good and shows that the phone can run in High Definition video at 30 frames per second.
There is also a secondary camera with a 5 MP camera with a 720 pixel ability. Much like other phones in this class it also comes with an active noise cancellation ability with a dedicated microphone.
The Xperia M4 Aqua also comes with vibration; MP3 as well as WAV ringtones. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack as well as a loudspeaker. WiFi is also available for Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA and hotspot. There is Bluetooth, A-GPS as well as GLONASS and there is also NFC (Near Field Communications) ability. There is also a USB port as well as an FM radio and RDS. There are also a few sensors on the phone such as an accelerometer, proximity sensor as well as a compass. Messaging is standard SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, IM with Push Email. There is also an HTML5 browser and there is also no Java.
With a non-removable Li-Ion 2400 mAh battery, up to 681 h (2G) in standby time and up to 12 h 40 min (2G) in talk time. The phone offers good battery life considering the hardware. Overall the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua phone is good for its price range as Xperia offers both lower and higher specs. Its a good phone if you are looking long term as it will still hold its value many years down the line.