By Stephen Schenck

Sony will soon be launching the Xperia GX and Xperia SX in Japan. Both phones have some very solid specs, with dual-core Snapdragon S4 chips under their hoods, but the GX really stands out with, among other features, a 13-megapixel main camera. Of course, all those pixels are meaningless if they can’t help the phone take a decent pic, so we’ve been understandably curious to see just ho well the phone’s sensor would perform. A couple test shots made from the GX have recently emerged, giving us our first look at its imaging capabilities.

Admittedly, these are indoor shots, so there’s not nearly as much ambient light available as we might get with some test shots taken outdoors. Even in this environment, first impressions from the pictures make them out to be crisp and clean. That many megapixels just begs for taking a closer look at things, though, and upon going full-size, some of the GX’s flaws start to become apparent.

Color noise is prevalent, in light areas as well as dark, though far more pronounced in darker regions; instead of solid neutral tones, we see a splotchy mess of pink and green hues. We also see sharp lines decay into speckled edges, and a general murkiness invade portions of the image, showing that same color noise. Granted, this is a still physically small sensor, and we don’t expect SLR quality. Ultimately, we’d like to see some more examples from the GX’s camera, and under a variety of different conditions, before passing judgment.

Click on the images below to view full-size versions.