We test the new Sony Xperia XZ, the Japanese company’s top of the range for 2016. Your camera and screen aspire to be one of the best on the market, will you? We went over it in depth in this analysis of the Xperia XZ.
Sony, to the high-end assault
Sony’s Xperia range is very wide, although by 2016 the Japanese brand bets almost everything to its new top of the range, the Xperia XZ. Presented at the IFA in Berlin, it is a high-end mobile that wants to compete from you to you with the best of the year.
His credentials are the usual on all Xperias: a design with straight lines and a good camera, at least in theory. Will that be enough? To make up your mind, we’ve tested and developed a full analysis of the Sony Xperia XZ.
By characteristics, it has little to envy any other mobile. However, the specifications of a mobile are not everything, and that is well known by Sony. The sensations after using his flagship are somewhat bittersweet, with too many lights and shadows for what was expected of him.
With the mobile market increasingly competitive, Sony here has an opportunity to position itself well for 2017. A company of this size wants and needs to have a flagship among the best, although at the moment most Xperias have not finished shining as it deserves a historic as the Japanese brand. Will you get it with this Xperia XZ? We’ll tell you.
Xperia Aesthetics: You love her or hate her
The look of the Sony Xperia XZ remains very much in line with all of the company’s smartphones. It is rectangular and with a lot of straight line, unlike the general trend of the sector. It does not have physical buttons on the front, only the camera buttons, volume and off on the right side. Its exact dimensions are 146 x 72 x 8.1 mm and 161 g in weight.
Of these buttons you have to say several things. The first of these is that they are not located in the usual place they occupy on the rest of Android mobiles. Volume ones are just below the off and on. At first this can generate a negative opinion of the Xperia XZ, but once you get used to it, it’s a very ergonomic position. Home’s, in addition to unlocking it, plays a fingerprint reader.
The camera button is used to activate the corresponding app, as well as to focus and shoot. Sony mobile phones have a photographic vocation, hence this trigger has not disappeared. It’s especially useful if you like to take pictures, but little else.
Sony’s best mobile for 2016 features two speakers on the front: one at the top and one at the bottom. To play music is fine, but it has a clear drawback: it makes the body of the mobile much larger than it should, if you consider the size of your screen. It feels like the manufacturer could have designed a much more compact smartphone by speeding up the top and bottom edges a little more.
The material used for the XZ’s unibody body is ALKALEIDO metal. To the touch, this metal remembers, perhaps too much, plastic. The outer edge does convey metallic feeling, but not the back cover. In fact, this is quite a magnet for fingerprints. At least it’s not especially slippery, an increasingly common feature.
Another argument in favor that we cannot overlook in this review of the Sony Xperia XZ is its IP68 certification. It’s submersible, so we understand each other. Maybe this has something to do with design, and it’s not the same to manufacture and assemble a mobile to resist dust than to do it completely water-watered. In this case it is submersible for half an hour to and a half meters deep.
Outstanding luminosity
If during the analysis of the Sony Xperia XZ we have found an amazing feature, it is your screen. The manufacturer’s pretensions are to stand out in other aspects, such as the camera and the design; it’s still the panel that really catches the eye. We are talking about a 5.2 inch IPS LCD with Full HD 1080p and 2.5D resolution, that is, slightly curved on the sides, although perhaps these specifications do not say much.
The opinion that deserves the screen of the new Xperia is really good. In addition to being very luminous – allowing perfect visibility in any circumstance and viewing angle – the color quality is indisputable. The difference can be noticed even by comparing this mobile with others of similar characteristics.
The two technologies responsible for panel performance are the Triluminos display and the X-Reality Engine. Both are already present not only on Sony’s latest mobile, but also on all of their new TVs and monitors. The effort of the Japanese must be recognized, and that is that with this new generation of screens they almost rise to the occasion of Samsung’s Super AMOLED.
The viewing experience is one of the best that can be found today on a mobile, and that’s something truly remarkable.
The tactile response is also unbeatable, although you can’t expect less from a terminal that aspires to sneak in among the best mobiles of 2016. Perhaps more dots per inch, since with «only» 424 it stays a little far from the considered better smartphone screen, that of the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which has 534.
Software, a weak spot
Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow is the firmware of the XZ, and the truth is that it gets as much out of it as possible. Optimization is good, which has a positive impact on both performance and battery life.
If you can put some glue on it, it has to do with the large amount of bloatware and pre-installed applications that Sony inserts into your terminals. In addition, the look of the customization layer is a bit old for what is styled on Android today. It is in the antipodes of the minimalism of Android AOSP ROMs or the customization layers of Chinese mobiles.
For example, Sony includes several applications of dubious utility and that, in any case, provide a service for which other alternatives already exist. Movie Creator, Xperia Lounge, News, Swiftkey Keyboard or AVG Protection antivirus are just a few examples. If users are upset about launching a mobile and already coming over with apps, Sony doesn’t seem to have taken it for granted.
This point can be a problem if you don’t expand its capacity using a Micro SD card. If you don’t, between your phone software and the counted apps and files you download, the occupied space can be easily moved to more than 70%.
The Android customization layer used by the Japanese firm also lacks usability in several respects. You can’t add phones to the blacklist or lock them. The gallery has an aspect reminiscent of the Android versions of years ago. It’s very unintuitive and sometimes desperate.
One of Sony’s bets is the position of the fingerprint reader. Located on the Power button on the right side, it facilitates unlocking and makes it much more comfortable and ergonomic, although more often the account refuses to recognize the fingerprint. Another drawback that can be put on it is that the screen does not activate when you put your finger on the reader, an option that more manufacturers should start considering.
The Sony Xperia XZ doesn’t skimp on power and graphics
During the test of the Sony Xperia XZ we have not noticed slowing down or suffered system crashes only once. It’s a point in his favor, and we have to make it clear. With this mobile you will be able to use any application or game without problems.
Performance is assured, as with a quad-core Snapdragon 820, Adreno 530 GPU and 3GB of RAM there is no process to resist. That said, it should also be clarified that it stands out especially among mobiles that equip this configuration, something that has made a difference throughout this review of the Xperia XZ.
It can be said without half inks that it is a good mobile for both basic users and those who want to play the latest releases. In addition, it gets little hot, and this speaks well of software and operating system optimization. Heat dissipation is an increasingly pressing problem on almost every mobile, with increasingly powerful processors. However, this is not the case with the XZ, which performs surprisingly well when cooling its components.
Although there will be anyone who can think that 3 GB of RAM are few, it really isn’t. They’re enough not to be in trouble under any circumstances. Sony has not entered the scale of specifications that lead other brands to plan already mobiles with 8 GB of RAM.