Sony Xperia Z Review | Specs and Features

Info

Sony launched the Xperia Z, its new flagship smartphone in the Indian market in the first week of March. The USP of the phone is its 5-inch 1080p HD display, in addition to its water and dust resistant build, and a 13.1-megapixel camera. It’s the second phone after the HTC Butterfly, to feature a full-HD display. However, it’s priced about Rs.7,000 cheaper than the HTC Butterfly at Rs. 38,990. Sony is also trying its best foot forward in promoting the phone in the Indian market with a star-studded marketing campaign. But does the phone stand out among other phones of the top strata of the high-end smartphone segment? We try to find out.

Likes

• Brilliant HD screen
• Excellent build quality
• Dust and Water proof
• Great performance
• Decent battery back-up

Dislikes

• Gets hot even after limited usage
• Screen viewing angles could have been better
• Low light photos appear grainy

Design

Similar to the LG Optimus G that we reviewed a few days back, the first thing that you notice about the phone is its industrial design. It looks like a big rectangular glass slab with clean lines that give the phone a no nonsense persona, and there are no chrome frames or other embellishments barring the power button which stands out a little.

 As we mentioned, the phone sports a 5-inch screen, which essentially dominates the front of the phone while the rest is tempered glass with a reflective coating. The display is seamless with the rest of the front and Sony says that they’ve brought the touch panel closer to the display. The bezel is really thin and there are no hardware controls. The phone doesn’t have separate capacitive buttons for navigation and instead has onscreen buttons similar to Nexus devices. This is a welcome change and we’d like all phone makers to keep navigation consistent.

Display

After the HTC Butterfly, the Xperia Z is the second phone in the Indian market to sport a 1080p display. The phone sports a 5-inch TFT display that has a resolution of 1080×1920 pixels and a pixel density of 441ppi. The screen is bright and vivid, and text looks extremely crisp while app icons and images look sharp. Images and videos look spectacular thanks to the addition of Sony’s BRAVIA Engine 2.

Camera

The Sony Xperia Z sports a 13-megapixel Exmor RS rear camera with auto focus, Burst Mode, and LED flash. The phone’s camera app is feature rich featuring, Superior auto, Normal, Video, Burst, Picture Effects, Sweep Panorama and different Scene selection modes.

The Superior auto mode doesn’t let you customise granular settings barring that of Flash, Resolution, and Timer with the default resolution set to 3920×2940. The normal mode allows you to tinker with settings like Exposure value, White balance, ISO, and others. The camera also includes image and video stabilisation.

Software / User Interface

The Sony Xperia Z ships with Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. It’s not the most recent version, but that’s consistent with other Android phones in the market. On its part, Sony has promised that the phone will shortly receive the Android 4.2 update. Sony has included its own UI skin on top of the software but it’s not as deep as HTC’s Sense UI or LG’s Optimus UI, and is rather more close to the stock build. Sony says that the unified UI will bring the same user experience to tablets and phones, and include its media apps.

The unlocking gesture of the lock screen resembles the motion of your finger through a set of window blinds and we’ve not seen this on another phone as of yet. The lock screen also offers shortcuts to directly unlock and initiate the Walkman (for playing music) and the Camera app. However, unlike the Optimus G, you cannot customise the unlocking animation or change the app shortcuts.

Battery

The Xperia Z is powered by a 1.5GHz Qualcomm S4 Pro quad-core processor with 2GB RAM onboard, and an Adreno 320 chip for processing graphics. The HTC Butterfly and the LG Optimus G also feature the same chipset. There is 16GB of internal storage, which is expandable by another 32GB via a microSD card.

With Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the overall experience of navigation through the interface was extremely impressive, thanks largely to Project Butter and all the power under the hood. We did not experience any lag at all while launching apps, playing games, scrolling web pages or switching between apps.

My Verdict

The Sony Xperia Z is one of the best Android phones we’ve used combining a major set of features, a great HD screen and great build quality. The phone’s IP55 and 57 dust and water resistant body make it ideal for people who’re always on the move and/or a little careless with handling their phones.

Compared to the HTC Butterfly, the phone’s Rs. 38,990 price tag makes it better priced. But comparing it to other non-HD screen flagships, the price is a bit steep.