Sony Xperia Z Review

Earlier this year, Sony had globally announced their latest flagship device the Xperia Z along with Xperia ZL at the CES 2013 in Las Vegas. The India launch was sometime in early March 2013 for which we did the event coverage too. Sony has got all their skills imaging, mobile, gaming to this phone and quite possibly their best design ever. With all the top-notch specifications, is it able to perform that well? With a lot of better high-end options from other OEMs, is it worth to buy this device? If you are thinking of any of these questions, you just got lucky because you landed at the right webpage. Read below to know more.

Box Contents:

Sony Xperia Z comes in a small package with basic accessories like earbuds, data cable, power adapter and the usual user manual. So there’s nothing special about the package, its just smaller than earlier Sony packaging.

Design:

No doubt this is the best design Sony has ever come up with. Alike their Arco S, the Xperia Z is also a rectangular slab but with a unique distinctive design. The Xperia Z features a tempered glass back that gives a very premium look and feel to the device. The phone looks stunning and reflects the amount of effort that has been put in the R&D, but it still is not ergonomic. The sharp edges even though with the rounded corners can’t provide that comfort possibly because 5-inch devices can’t be good in one-hand but exceptions are always there.

Another thing which caught our attention in a bad sense is the placement of the speaker output which is on the right edge. During our testing period we could never miss out covering the grill when holding the phone with your right hand which is pretty obvious.

All the ports have a flip-flap over that provide the water resistant which is kind of USP for this device.

Overall, the design looks good but holding the phone altogether can change your opinions. While using it for a week we actually found this design to be growing on us. We too missed the curves initially, but when we used it completely changed our opinion about the device.

Hardware:

With the advent of the powerful SOC, it was high time for Sony to come up with something competitive, and here they are. Xperia Z packs a Qualcomm MDM9215M / APQ8064 SOC with Snapdragon 1.5 GHz quad-core Krait processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory. It also give its users the option to expand the memory via a microSD card slot up to to 64 GB.

Talking about the displays, we all know how good they have been especially adding their Bravia technology to mobile devices, but this time its a let down. Proudly presenting the 5inch full HD 1080p display with Sony Bravia technology its looks absolutely stunning from the front but has some terrible viewing angles even though the mobile Bravia technology on.

Overall, the hardware is quite impressive apart from the display. Snapdragon has he ability to handle mutitasking giving a top-notch performance with absolutely no lag. Display has unfortunately not been able to cope with that, and we hope Sony invests in something better next time. We were able to suck the last bit of 2320 mAh battery for maximum a day on medium usage and 15-16 hours on heavy usage.

Software:

Xperia Z runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean mobile operating system with their custom nextGEN UI layering. This Sony’s customization are kept minimal and looks pretty comparing with what other competitors are coming out with.
There is a bit of Sony bloatware too including the McAfee antivirus, but that’s all usable.

There is a nice addition to the operating system for power efficiency. It’s called the ‘Stamina Mode’ which supposedly claims to increase the standby time. It basically kills all the background processes when the screen is off.

This is not the latest version of Android so far but Sony has promised to update it with Android 4.2 soon. Hope Sony keeps their promise, as we know how promptly they revert back to the updates.

Camera:

13.1 megapixel cybershot camera on a Sony device, we think just the name says it all, but it’s not so. The camera clicks decent shots provided the lighting conditions are optimal. The indoors and low-light imaging wasn’t very impressive. It has the standard camera shooting modes with an additional fine shot mode. The fine shot mode automatically detects the lighting conditions and focus according to give the best possible output.

Xperia Z has the HDR video recording feature too which is not any common till now but will be soon.

Our Verdict:

Sony Xperia Z is a good looking device but lacks in display and camera. The water resistant and dust proof capability though being a USP might not serve as the major USP for consumers. The 38k pricing makes it a only winner.

Being the flagship device from Sony is, it is comparable with the HTC Butterfly and wins only at the pricing. Galaxy S4 and HTC One are of a totally different league and should not be compared with this.

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Photographs : Dev Uberoi