After many yeses and many no’s, I’m really happy and glad that I own this smartphone. Well if you’re here, seeking about reviews of this phone then you must have already heard a lot of negative reviews like it has poor viewing angles, gets heated up and bla bla. I would just advise you, only go with review which has a Certified Review badge and the ones who’ve bought the phone in real as here, most of the reviewers don’t even have the phone nor plan to have it but still are writing reviews to downtrodden the ones who’re willing to buy it. Being an owner of the Xperia Z, here’s my personal note regarding the same-
It’s a smartphone. There isn’t any smartphone out there which doesn’t gets heated up when you play low/high graphics games, surf the internet for a long time, watch movies/videos, call up someone and talk with them for quiet a long time etc. Of course, any device would get hot if you do the above mentioned things. But the coolest thing about this device is, when it heats up you can cool it up quickly by placing it in a bowl of water. This beats ’em all.
No wonder people use their phones either in portrait mode or in landscape mode, no matter in whatever posture they’re. If we talk about the poor viewing angles then yes it is true but I don’t get one thing, what would one get by viewing their phone diagonally? I mean there would hardly anyone who uses his/her phone diagonally from a certain angle.
Xperia Z comes with a Jelly Bean version of 4.1.2 and still this is big question for many of the people that why it doesn’t comes with the latest version of 4.2? Guys, can’t you have some patience? It’s been said that the phone can be upgraded to 4.2 so why not just wait for the official update OTA? With 4.1.2 the device performs extremely well and smooth, there ain’t no lags during navigation, ease scrolling and provides a good user experience.
Sound quality is average. Sony is well known to provide rich sound experience on earphones rather on it’s speakers. Actually, the placement of the speaker is not well. Due to it’s alignment in the bottom right, it feels like the music plays on one halve of the speaker. But anyways, the sound is superb on any earphones.
Camera quality is superb, both primary and secondary one. I especially loved, front camera’s clarity. Skyping is much clear with the 2.2 MP cam!
Battery’s stand by time is a bit above the average at it’s best. The phone takes around 30 minutes to get fully charged while at it’s discharged state. Being a smartphone, the battery will drain the moment you start playing games, watching videos or surfing the internet. Still it’s totally cool coz the average usage of the battery is around 4-5 hours if you use it continuously. In the end, battery life is decent for heavy use.
The phone’s durability is the highlights of this device. I bet you must have developed your engrossment when you’d have seen it getting washed with water. Booyeah! The waterproof and dust resistant features are the top notch merits of Xperia Z. Every port has it’s safety gears which help them from staying out of the water. The speaker and mic are made waterproof so it doesn’t needs any attention if water gets into it. Make sure that all your flaps are closed when you dip it in the water for a test or it gets wet due to rain or something else as Sony won’t hold any responsibilities if the phone is made contact with water with the flaps open. As it will make your phone suffer!
Voice and call clarity is as clean as water. With Sony’s microphone noise suppression, one can reduce the background noise during a call. You can also set the call equalizer to bright or smooth for more better surrounding sound. You can also get a richer voice listening experience during calls by enabling speaker voice enhancement.
Internal memory is of 16GB out of which user available is 11 GB. This is well enough for your music and pictures. For storing your HD movies, you can upgrade your storage with a 32GB/64GB card.
The UI is soothingly responsive and lustrous. It provides a good UX and the alignment of the shortcuts, widgets and apps is very well. The Dragon Trail glass on the backside of the phone makes it looks elegantly sexy. The front one is a shatterproof glass which is not available yet on any other phones.
Tips:
- While putting the provided screen guard on to the phone, don’t use the given plastic piece as while you’re flattening the screen from one side, the other side may result in having bubbles. Use a Credit/Debit/ID card horizontally while applying the lamination so as the screen sticks appropriately to both sides without leaving behind any bubbles.
Conclusion:
This smartphone is worth of your every bucks and gives you a superior personality when you hold it. You won’t like to pay around 45-50k for a phone with similar design architecture of it’s predecessors. The only phone which can give Xperia Z a closer competition will be the HTC One.