The Xperia E4 sports a 5-inch screen and is somewhat bigger than last year’s Xperia E3, which uses a 4.5-inch screen. However, the 5-inch IPS display fails to impress in the resolution department, as it’s a qHD (960x540) unit.

However, the Xperia E4 is designed with affordability in mind, and the rest of the spec proves it. The phone is powered by a MediaTek MT6582 quad-core Cortex-A7 SoC with Mali-400MP2 graphics. There’s no LTE support, but at least the Xperia E4 features 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and a microSD slot.

Sony really pinched pennies on the camera, so you’re looking at a 5-megapixel unit at the back and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The phone measures 137 x 74.6 x 10.5mm and weighs 144g, which is not bad, as the bezels are quite small. However, it is a bit on the thick side. Inside you’ll find a 2300mAh battery that should have no trouble keeping the SoC and low-res screen going for a couple of days.

There is still no word on the price, but the Xperia E3 will clearly go after the Moto G and similar devices, if not even cheaper ones. The understated design should appeal to many consumers, especially thanks to the smaller bezels – the E3 featured relatively chubby bezels which made it look quite old, so the E4 is a nice improvement.

Sony has a habit of delivering relatively good build quality on a budget, but obviously in the ~$150 segment we can’t expect miracles. The Xperia E3 is currently priced halfway between the Moto E and Moto G in major European markets, so we expect the E4 to end up with similar pricing (the spec is halfway between the two Motos anyway).