![gsmarena 001 Heres what Sony Ericsson Mobile BRAVIA Engine really does [REVIEW]](https://blog.gsmarena.com/pics/11/07/bravia-review/gsmarena_001.jpg)
If you have been keeping track you would know that the recent batch of high-end Xperia smartphones pack some of the best LCD displays we have seen. Their Reality displays might lack a bit in viewing angles, but their image quality is downright splendid, and as the company would gladly tell anyone, their new Mobile BRAVIA Engine certainly plays a big part in delivering it.
The good news is the BRAVIA Engine does everything that Sony Ericsson promises it will do. It enhances sharpness, increases contrast and saturation and tries to tackle digital noise. Of course, that only works with photos and videos, so you should not be looking for its effect elsewhere. Now marketing talk is always sweet, but very rarely true so we decided to check out if that engine really does anything or its a gimick. Here come our observations along with plenty of photos evidence that we gathered along the way.
Sharpening
The BRAVIA sharpening is quite strong and the effect is pretty easy to see. In fact its so strong that its not necessarily a good thing with all photos. As you can see in the second two examples here it can also lead to jagged edges, which is not ideal.
![gsmarena 003 Heres what Sony Ericsson Mobile BRAVIA Engine really does [REVIEW]](https://blog.gsmarena.com/pics/11/07/bravia-review/gsmarena_003.jpg)
However, this is by far not as easy to spot on a small mobile screen, so we are willing to give this one the thumbs up. On a smartphone screen the oversharpened images leave this faux high-detail impression that might bother serious photographers, but should look pleasing to just about everyone else.
![gsmarena 005 Heres what Sony Ericsson Mobile BRAVIA Engine really does [REVIEW]](https://blog.gsmarena.com/pics/11/07/bravia-review/gsmarena_005.jpg)
Contrast and saturation
As you can imagine no processing technique in the world could help a display actually increase its contrast. However, by applying an effect similar to an S-curve in photo editing, where the darks are made slightly darker, while the whites are made whiter you can simulate higher contrast.
![gsmarena 002 Heres what Sony Ericsson Mobile BRAVIA Engine really does [REVIEW]](https://blog.gsmarena.com/pics/11/07/bravia-review/gsmarena_002.jpg)
The increased saturation carries just about the same benefits and shortcomings it makes colors livelier, but in areas where there were already lively, some detail might be lost. The downside is that you are losing some information as some shadow areas get too dark and some bright areas clip so no detail is visible in them.
Noise reduction
The noise reduction is the hardest to spot, so we’ve picked a pretty noisy image as our example. It is also one of the areas where the BRAVIA doesn’t do as well as promised. You see, sharpening, contrast boosting and saturation boosting all lead to increase of the noise, so when you apply noise reduction after those, the best you could hope for is to end up with just about the same amount you started with.
![gsmarena 004 Heres what Sony Ericsson Mobile BRAVIA Engine really does [REVIEW]](https://blog.gsmarena.com/pics/11/07/bravia-review/gsmarena_004.jpg)
And the Mobile BRAVIA Engine does exactly that. The noise is brought back to its initial levels so the new punchy image is not ruined by it. It gets restructured with all that processing but the general noise amounts are roughly the same.
