Sony Xperia Z Full In Depth Review - iGyaan
The Sony Xperia Z is a highly capable smartphone that offers a great user experience despite some minor drawbacks.
Thoughts on Design and Display
The device's design is sleek and streamlined, with a focus on functionality. The speakerphone is located at the top of the device, which can lead to muffled sound quality when it's placed upright. However, this issue is largely mitigated when playing games, as the gaming review on the screen demonstrates. To check out our full review and see how the device performs in different scenarios.
Gaming Performance
The Xperia Z is capable of handling high-end graphics without any issues, making it an excellent choice for gamers. Our gaming review showcases the device's capabilities, and we're happy to report that it can handle demanding games with ease. However, prolonged usage can cause the device to heat up, which can become uncomfortable to hold.
Futuristic Features
The Xperia Z boasts a range of futuristic features, including NFC, making it future-proof for at least the next year. The device also comes with advanced power management capabilities, which help extend battery life. While we were able to get a full day's use out of the device without any issues, turning on these features can prolong usage.
Battery Life
We're pleased to report that the Xperia Z has excellent battery life, lasting throughout the day without any significant issues. However, when the device heats up, it can lead to reduced performance and decreased overall usage. This is not an issue with the battery itself but rather a problem with the processor's heat management.
Camera Review
We're working on releasing a camera review for the Xperia Z shortly, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, we recommend checking out our gaming review to see how the device performs in different scenarios.
Value for Money
At its price point of around 38,000 rupees, the Xperia Z offers excellent value for money. While it may not be the best option available in terms of display quality, it's a solid choice for those looking for an upgrade to Sony devices. The added features like waterproofing and the sleek design make it a great option for those who want a premium smartphone experience.
In conclusion, the Xperia Z is a well-rounded device that offers a great user experience despite some minor drawbacks. With its excellent gaming performance, advanced power management capabilities, and futuristic features, it's an excellent choice for those looking for a high-end smartphone. While we would recommend waiting or investing in a better option if possible, the Xperia Z is definitely worth considering for those who want a premium device with a range of innovative features.
Additional Features
One notable feature of the Xperia Z is its sealed and water-resistant design. This makes it an excellent choice for those who want a phone that can withstand rough handling or accidental spills. The device also comes with a range of useful software features, including a widget system that allows users to overlay small apps on the screen. These widgets can be customized to suit individual preferences, and they offer a convenient way to access frequently used apps and functions.
The Xperia Z also boasts a unique feature called Timescape, which provides a customizable home screen with a range of built-in widgets and features. Users can choose from a variety of pre-installed widgets, including a timer, calculator, and more. These widgets can be easily customized and rearranged to suit individual preferences.
In addition, the Xperia Z comes with advanced multitasking capabilities, allowing users to quickly jump between apps and manage running applications. This is done through a simple swipe gesture or by tapping on any app to quickly access it. Users can also customize these features to suit their needs, adding more convenience to the device.
Overall, the Xperia Z is a well-rounded smartphone that offers a great user experience despite some minor drawbacks. With its excellent gaming performance, advanced power management capabilities, and futuristic features, it's an excellent choice for those looking for a high-end smartphone.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's happening guys about.in and today we're going to be taking a look at the new Sony xeria Z Now incidentally this is the flagship for Sony and this is quite a decent looking phone if you look at the device itself over here it's got really nice uh overall looks you can see it's got a really nice and glossy front glass and uh you've got interesting Optics as well on the device on the side over here uh you have covered ports so you have a USB port which is covered and you also have a micro SD card slot which is also covered uh you also have your docking pins on the left of the device which are over here as you can see but the overall Aesthetics of the device are really nice and good to look at the xeria Z is one of the nicer looking uh smartphones that have been launched in India uh you can see the use of uh stainless steel as the power button makes the device look really uh really premium and the back glass itself uh gives it a very premium look itself when you place it down on the table it looks like a good slab of uh uh really nice construction it overall has a good slim profile it's kind of square-ish in its design and uh some people may find it a little awkward to hold because of the simple fact that it is a little wider than uh standard traditional phones and it does not really fit well in the hand uh because of uh the sharp edges of the back as well as the front but overall Aesthetics wise this is a nice looking phone uh if we talk about Hardware on this device on the top over here you can see we have the earpiece along with the Sony logo and for the camera we have a front-facing 2.2 map camera that is capable of doing 1080p video if you talk about the screen over here we have a 5 in uh 1920 x 1080 pixel display which gives it a total of 441 pixels per in so Retina display is long gone you also have 10 finger multi-touch on this device along with uh a shatterproof scratch resistant glass uh which is not really scratch resistant and I'll talk about that when I get to that portion and you also have the Sony mobile Bravia Engine 2 which is again a little bit of a disappointment from this device uh and I'll talk about that as well if we turn it around to the back we have an impressive 13 megapix camera that does a good job of capturing pictures as well as full HD video and you also have uh 16 GB of inbuilt storage and 2 GB of RAM you have uh 32 GB micro SD card expandability uh with the slot on the side uh so that's more or less the total specifications of the hardware if we talk about that but on the inside we have a quad core Snapdragon uh crate processor which is running at 1.5 GHz and we also have adreno 320 GPU if we talk about the operating system we have Android 4.1 .2 that has been customized by Sony's own Timescape user interface which looks really nice and you can see this nice shutter looking effect uh that we have on the device that looks really good so if you talk about the lock screen over here you have this new shutter effect uh that they have added to lock the screen you can slide in from the left to access your music controls and uh you can slide in from the right to directly go to the camera since we are already in the camera let's talk about the camera interface a little bit uh real quick I need to unlock it to go into the camera settings so if you go into the camera settings you can see that we have uh the camera resolution I can set it to 12 mapel uh although it says that it has a 13 map camera but the maximum uh image size is 12 map that it captures which is quite strange you also have self timer you also have quick launch you have touch capture which you can turn on or off you can set your storage uh you can turn on flash smile shutter Geo tagging Etc and you can also set the flash settings you can also change the mode from a superior auto to a standard normal mode video mode a burst mode uh you can also have picture effects you have a couple of picture effects uh that you can apply so you have fishee nostalgic miniature uh you can look at all these effects uh as in when you're clicking a picture you can also shift from picture effects to a sweep Panorama a scene selection you can also switch to the front camera and a front video as well again you can have the settings for those as in when you record you also have a nice interface which allows you to capture video or photo depending on what you want without needing to toggle from photo to video mode and you can also capture images while you're recording video just like uh HTC did with their one series that's a quick look at the lock screen if we come back into the main home screen over here let me quickly change the wallpaper guys because uh it's a little difficult to see with this wallpaper I'm going to try and put a darker wallpaper in the background and I'll also be able to show you how easy it is to change the wallpaper so you simply tap down on the screen and just pick out a wallpaper I just can't seem to find a wallpaper that look nice on the screen you know what I'm going to do I'm going to go into the camera and I'm just going to click a black picture and I'm going to use that as the wallpaper for the purposes of this video so uh We've set a black wallpaper in the background so that you can view uh the icons on the screen easily uh you can see we have a date and time information which is also a widget from Sony you can quickly tap that go to your alarm settings Etc you can go to the clock basically and if I come back out you can see we have a standard Timescape user interface uh I can pinch out to get all my screens but they've changed the way I pinch out and look at my display whereas earlier I used to get dancing widgets now I get all my screens that you can scroll through easily without any issues you can get up to seven home screens uh as per your requirement and you can customize them as and in the way that you want to you can also set a particular dashboard as your home screen you also have a nice New uh notification panel for the Timescape user interface you can turn on or off Wii sound Etc from here and you can also go into settings directly from here the xeria Z has an interesting amount of power and management capabilities you can also turn on stamina mode low battery mode and interestingly enough you have location based Wi-Fi so Wi-Fi will automatically be turned on when you're in the proximity of a saved Wi-Fi network for example we have uh Wi-Fi saved in our office so every time I walk in with the Xperia Z uh the Wi-Fi turns on so that's an interesting new feature in the power management mode of course you have xeria settings as well so you can set your internet settings uh your screen mirroring for from an Xperia television or a Sony television you can also start mirror link from this via US USB to another device again you can wirelessly transfer Xperia information on your uh Media Link enabled devices and uh of course you have USB connectivity options here as well so a bunch of Xperia settings that are here and you can also configure your apps you also have NFC enabled on this device so you can turn on NFC and have the Xperia settings from the previous generation of Xperia phones so the Xperia P which allowed you to organize your device using NFC you can do that that with the Xperia Z as well a couple of things that I would like to bring to notice is that despite the fact that you have a full HD display it is quite washed out uh Outdoors it's not as great as the display was on the Xperia S uh or in fact on the Xperia P and uh we don't know what the reason for that is and Sony is really LED down uh with the quality of the display on the Xperia Z the xeria Z is certified water resistant to uh ipv5 and uh that makes it a good phone to use especially you can use it during rains and all of that and it won't be a problem again it's not recommended that you use this device in water but the fact that it is resistant up to 1 M and to a maximum of 30 minutes from water so you have IP 57 certification so it is dust and water resistant so it will have a longer life uh but it's not waterproof if you look at the dialer over here you can see we have a nice Xperia dialer I can shift from contacts uh to favorites to groups and if I go into messaging over here uh you can see we have the standard uh Xperia keyboard uh you also have continuous input in this which looks really nice and works really well so let me quickly show you and uh as you can see despite the fact that I was completely off track it quite got that right if I switch from portrait to landscape on this I get a wider keyboard looks really nice overall I like the way uh Graphics have been laid out on the xeria Z it looks really nice I'm also going to quickly try and play a video of YouTube on this device uh for you guys what's happening guys about back entertain and we're going hands on with the new HTC1 it's the new flagship Android device from the company so let's take a quick look you can see the overall construction of so while you're playing back videos the colors come out quite right uh but overall when you're clicking pictures and all of that the colors are quite faded on the screen and that just seems to be a mismanagement of software capabilities for the device uh we feel that the uh display is quite nice but it seems a little washed out at times and it seems that it's uh sometimes too bright uh to look at and the colors are just not deep enough uh that's an issue with the screen and the other issue we have is the location of the speaker phone as we did mention in our gaming review as well the location of the speaker phone is quite inconvenient if you're holding the device like this uh you will quite muffle the speaker phone and if you're holding it with one hand either way from your left hand or from your right hand in both scenarios you end up muffling up the speaker so the location of the speaker alth the well thought of uh to not come in the way uh will actually come in the way if you hold the device like this but if you're playing games games like this the speaker phone is on the top so the issue with the speaker phone being on the rear and being muffled out uh gets uh eliminated you can check out our gaming review uh on uh the screen right now you can see the gaming review is here and uh you can click on the screen and go to our gaming review to check out uh what we said about gaming on the xeria Z you can also check out benchmarks for the xeria Z on the screen right now so click on the video on the screen to check out the benchmarks for the xeria Z uh overall we are quite happy with the device and we think at a price of about 38,000 rupees uh it is a good option for those looking for an upgrade to the Sony devices although we feel that the display could have been a little better and the position of the speaker phone is a little off uh in terms of performance we feel that the phone is quite capable and as you must have seen in our gaming review the phone is capable of handling highend graphic games without any issues whatsoever over prolonged usage this area of the phone gets a little warm and we are unhappy with that and it it it becomes quite a little uncomfortable uh to hold after it gets really warm the fact that it has NFC and all the futuristic capabilities of devices nowadays uh makes it a little future prooof for at least the next year so if you do end up buying the Sony xeria Z you are investing in a good piece of Hardware uh if Sony can fix the color saturation in an update that'll be really nice and we'll be able to get a nicer looking uh display but if it's indeed a hardware issue uh then we are not too sure of of what the situation of this phone is going to be like in terms of battery life we are quite happy with the Sony xeria Z with the added power management inside the device uh we feel that you'll be able to use this device for a long period of time uh without any issues you do get a full days of use uh without any problems but if you do turn on the power management features uh the usage gets a little prolonged uh when the device does heat up it does not drain the battery so it's not an issue with the battery heating up it's an issue with the processor not managing uh the heat properly overall we feel that the experience is a great option for the price that it's come at but if you are willing to wait or willing to invest a little further uh you might be able to get better options but if you're looking for the xeria lineup the fact that it is sealed and resistant from water uh may be a value addition for some people which other devices may not be able to offer uh the fact that it sits flat on the table uh whether you put it vertically or horizontally uh makes it another good thing about the device and uh you can also prop it up if you so may choose too Sony has uh probably followed along the lines of uh the iPhone and added some markings on the back uh as well as some barcodes at the bottom which uh may not be aesthetically sound to some you also get a good feature that allows you to quickly jump to Google Now when you swipe in your finger uh from the bottom so it allows you to quickly initiate search uh the multitasking on this is slightly different so you get a bunch of things uh that you can enable and you also get quick widget sort of things that allow you to Overlay widgets on the screen uh you can get a timer you can get a calculator so Nifty little popups uh that almost look like uh pop-ups from uh the Samsung TouchWiz user interface but on the Timescape uh they allow you to only have one popup at a time and you can also quickly jump to the application from here again you can customize these popups as per your requirement and you can also download some small apps from the Google Play Store you can also manage your running application by simply sliding them to the left or you can tap on any of them to quickly jump to that with a good mix of uh software and Hardware the Sony xeria Z is like I said earlier a good option and as you can see we ran through the full video and we only dropped 1% of battery so in terms of battery life we are quite happy with the device and we'll be coming out with the camera review shortly so you can stay tuned for that if you have any questions or queries you can leave those in the comment section below or on Igan our website you can also catch us on Facebook Twitter Google+ and do subscribe to us on YouTube youtube.com/ youtube.com/ TV for networks thank you guys for watchingwhat's happening guys about.in and today we're going to be taking a look at the new Sony xeria Z Now incidentally this is the flagship for Sony and this is quite a decent looking phone if you look at the device itself over here it's got really nice uh overall looks you can see it's got a really nice and glossy front glass and uh you've got interesting Optics as well on the device on the side over here uh you have covered ports so you have a USB port which is covered and you also have a micro SD card slot which is also covered uh you also have your docking pins on the left of the device which are over here as you can see but the overall Aesthetics of the device are really nice and good to look at the xeria Z is one of the nicer looking uh smartphones that have been launched in India uh you can see the use of uh stainless steel as the power button makes the device look really uh really premium and the back glass itself uh gives it a very premium look itself when you place it down on the table it looks like a good slab of uh uh really nice construction it overall has a good slim profile it's kind of square-ish in its design and uh some people may find it a little awkward to hold because of the simple fact that it is a little wider than uh standard traditional phones and it does not really fit well in the hand uh because of uh the sharp edges of the back as well as the front but overall Aesthetics wise this is a nice looking phone uh if we talk about Hardware on this device on the top over here you can see we have the earpiece along with the Sony logo and for the camera we have a front-facing 2.2 map camera that is capable of doing 1080p video if you talk about the screen over here we have a 5 in uh 1920 x 1080 pixel display which gives it a total of 441 pixels per in so Retina display is long gone you also have 10 finger multi-touch on this device along with uh a shatterproof scratch resistant glass uh which is not really scratch resistant and I'll talk about that when I get to that portion and you also have the Sony mobile Bravia Engine 2 which is again a little bit of a disappointment from this device uh and I'll talk about that as well if we turn it around to the back we have an impressive 13 megapix camera that does a good job of capturing pictures as well as full HD video and you also have uh 16 GB of inbuilt storage and 2 GB of RAM you have uh 32 GB micro SD card expandability uh with the slot on the side uh so that's more or less the total specifications of the hardware if we talk about that but on the inside we have a quad core Snapdragon uh crate processor which is running at 1.5 GHz and we also have adreno 320 GPU if we talk about the operating system we have Android 4.1 .2 that has been customized by Sony's own Timescape user interface which looks really nice and you can see this nice shutter looking effect uh that we have on the device that looks really good so if you talk about the lock screen over here you have this new shutter effect uh that they have added to lock the screen you can slide in from the left to access your music controls and uh you can slide in from the right to directly go to the camera since we are already in the camera let's talk about the camera interface a little bit uh real quick I need to unlock it to go into the camera settings so if you go into the camera settings you can see that we have uh the camera resolution I can set it to 12 mapel uh although it says that it has a 13 map camera but the maximum uh image size is 12 map that it captures which is quite strange you also have self timer you also have quick launch you have touch capture which you can turn on or off you can set your storage uh you can turn on flash smile shutter Geo tagging Etc and you can also set the flash settings you can also change the mode from a superior auto to a standard normal mode video mode a burst mode uh you can also have picture effects you have a couple of picture effects uh that you can apply so you have fishee nostalgic miniature uh you can look at all these effects uh as in when you're clicking a picture you can also shift from picture effects to a sweep Panorama a scene selection you can also switch to the front camera and a front video as well again you can have the settings for those as in when you record you also have a nice interface which allows you to capture video or photo depending on what you want without needing to toggle from photo to video mode and you can also capture images while you're recording video just like uh HTC did with their one series that's a quick look at the lock screen if we come back into the main home screen over here let me quickly change the wallpaper guys because uh it's a little difficult to see with this wallpaper I'm going to try and put a darker wallpaper in the background and I'll also be able to show you how easy it is to change the wallpaper so you simply tap down on the screen and just pick out a wallpaper I just can't seem to find a wallpaper that look nice on the screen you know what I'm going to do I'm going to go into the camera and I'm just going to click a black picture and I'm going to use that as the wallpaper for the purposes of this video so uh We've set a black wallpaper in the background so that you can view uh the icons on the screen easily uh you can see we have a date and time information which is also a widget from Sony you can quickly tap that go to your alarm settings Etc you can go to the clock basically and if I come back out you can see we have a standard Timescape user interface uh I can pinch out to get all my screens but they've changed the way I pinch out and look at my display whereas earlier I used to get dancing widgets now I get all my screens that you can scroll through easily without any issues you can get up to seven home screens uh as per your requirement and you can customize them as and in the way that you want to you can also set a particular dashboard as your home screen you also have a nice New uh notification panel for the Timescape user interface you can turn on or off Wii sound Etc from here and you can also go into settings directly from here the xeria Z has an interesting amount of power and management capabilities you can also turn on stamina mode low battery mode and interestingly enough you have location based Wi-Fi so Wi-Fi will automatically be turned on when you're in the proximity of a saved Wi-Fi network for example we have uh Wi-Fi saved in our office so every time I walk in with the Xperia Z uh the Wi-Fi turns on so that's an interesting new feature in the power management mode of course you have xeria settings as well so you can set your internet settings uh your screen mirroring for from an Xperia television or a Sony television you can also start mirror link from this via US USB to another device again you can wirelessly transfer Xperia information on your uh Media Link enabled devices and uh of course you have USB connectivity options here as well so a bunch of Xperia settings that are here and you can also configure your apps you also have NFC enabled on this device so you can turn on NFC and have the Xperia settings from the previous generation of Xperia phones so the Xperia P which allowed you to organize your device using NFC you can do that that with the Xperia Z as well a couple of things that I would like to bring to notice is that despite the fact that you have a full HD display it is quite washed out uh Outdoors it's not as great as the display was on the Xperia S uh or in fact on the Xperia P and uh we don't know what the reason for that is and Sony is really LED down uh with the quality of the display on the Xperia Z the xeria Z is certified water resistant to uh ipv5 and uh that makes it a good phone to use especially you can use it during rains and all of that and it won't be a problem again it's not recommended that you use this device in water but the fact that it is resistant up to 1 M and to a maximum of 30 minutes from water so you have IP 57 certification so it is dust and water resistant so it will have a longer life uh but it's not waterproof if you look at the dialer over here you can see we have a nice Xperia dialer I can shift from contacts uh to favorites to groups and if I go into messaging over here uh you can see we have the standard uh Xperia keyboard uh you also have continuous input in this which looks really nice and works really well so let me quickly show you and uh as you can see despite the fact that I was completely off track it quite got that right if I switch from portrait to landscape on this I get a wider keyboard looks really nice overall I like the way uh Graphics have been laid out on the xeria Z it looks really nice I'm also going to quickly try and play a video of YouTube on this device uh for you guys what's happening guys about back entertain and we're going hands on with the new HTC1 it's the new flagship Android device from the company so let's take a quick look you can see the overall construction of so while you're playing back videos the colors come out quite right uh but overall when you're clicking pictures and all of that the colors are quite faded on the screen and that just seems to be a mismanagement of software capabilities for the device uh we feel that the uh display is quite nice but it seems a little washed out at times and it seems that it's uh sometimes too bright uh to look at and the colors are just not deep enough uh that's an issue with the screen and the other issue we have is the location of the speaker phone as we did mention in our gaming review as well the location of the speaker phone is quite inconvenient if you're holding the device like this uh you will quite muffle the speaker phone and if you're holding it with one hand either way from your left hand or from your right hand in both scenarios you end up muffling up the speaker so the location of the speaker alth the well thought of uh to not come in the way uh will actually come in the way if you hold the device like this but if you're playing games games like this the speaker phone is on the top so the issue with the speaker phone being on the rear and being muffled out uh gets uh eliminated you can check out our gaming review uh on uh the screen right now you can see the gaming review is here and uh you can click on the screen and go to our gaming review to check out uh what we said about gaming on the xeria Z you can also check out benchmarks for the xeria Z on the screen right now so click on the video on the screen to check out the benchmarks for the xeria Z uh overall we are quite happy with the device and we think at a price of about 38,000 rupees uh it is a good option for those looking for an upgrade to the Sony devices although we feel that the display could have been a little better and the position of the speaker phone is a little off uh in terms of performance we feel that the phone is quite capable and as you must have seen in our gaming review the phone is capable of handling highend graphic games without any issues whatsoever over prolonged usage this area of the phone gets a little warm and we are unhappy with that and it it it becomes quite a little uncomfortable uh to hold after it gets really warm the fact that it has NFC and all the futuristic capabilities of devices nowadays uh makes it a little future prooof for at least the next year so if you do end up buying the Sony xeria Z you are investing in a good piece of Hardware uh if Sony can fix the color saturation in an update that'll be really nice and we'll be able to get a nicer looking uh display but if it's indeed a hardware issue uh then we are not too sure of of what the situation of this phone is going to be like in terms of battery life we are quite happy with the Sony xeria Z with the added power management inside the device uh we feel that you'll be able to use this device for a long period of time uh without any issues you do get a full days of use uh without any problems but if you do turn on the power management features uh the usage gets a little prolonged uh when the device does heat up it does not drain the battery so it's not an issue with the battery heating up it's an issue with the processor not managing uh the heat properly overall we feel that the experience is a great option for the price that it's come at but if you are willing to wait or willing to invest a little further uh you might be able to get better options but if you're looking for the xeria lineup the fact that it is sealed and resistant from water uh may be a value addition for some people which other devices may not be able to offer uh the fact that it sits flat on the table uh whether you put it vertically or horizontally uh makes it another good thing about the device and uh you can also prop it up if you so may choose too Sony has uh probably followed along the lines of uh the iPhone and added some markings on the back uh as well as some barcodes at the bottom which uh may not be aesthetically sound to some you also get a good feature that allows you to quickly jump to Google Now when you swipe in your finger uh from the bottom so it allows you to quickly initiate search uh the multitasking on this is slightly different so you get a bunch of things uh that you can enable and you also get quick widget sort of things that allow you to Overlay widgets on the screen uh you can get a timer you can get a calculator so Nifty little popups uh that almost look like uh pop-ups from uh the Samsung TouchWiz user interface but on the Timescape uh they allow you to only have one popup at a time and you can also quickly jump to the application from here again you can customize these popups as per your requirement and you can also download some small apps from the Google Play Store you can also manage your running application by simply sliding them to the left or you can tap on any of them to quickly jump to that with a good mix of uh software and Hardware the Sony xeria Z is like I said earlier a good option and as you can see we ran through the full video and we only dropped 1% of battery so in terms of battery life we are quite happy with the device and we'll be coming out with the camera review shortly so you can stay tuned for that if you have any questions or queries you can leave those in the comment section below or on Igan our website you can also catch us on Facebook Twitter Google+ and do subscribe to us on YouTube youtube.com/ youtube.com/ TV for networks thank you guys for watching\n"