Hi Everyone, just thought I would give my first impressions/review of the Sony Z2 and some comparisons to my previous phone (HTC One X). It’s a bit long winded and I do pick up on a few negatives, but overall it’s a great phone. I Received it yesterday so I've had about a day to play with it. I've registered for the tablet Z but still awaiting confirmation that I'm getting one.
The Sony Z2 immediately looks great, high quality and very thin. The glass panel on the back looks nice but shows up finger prints quickly, I'm also not keen on the slight lip from a comfort perspective where the rear glass panel meets the metal chassis, I can feel the hard edges of these panels resting on my fingers which can be distracting (I am used to the single piece wrap around polycarbonate shell of the One X), but I’ve bought a snap on case so this isn't a big issue for me. The Z2 is quite a bit bigger but I can still reach the far corners of the screen with my thumb when holding it with one hand, you may struggle if you have small hands. I would say this phone is on the upper size limit for comfortable one handed use. The glass, metal and angled edges of the Z2 gives a colder and harder feel compared to the rounded plastic of the One X, I would say the Z2 is not as comfortable to hold, but on the up side the Z2 looks much nicer and feels like a more solidly built phone.
The screen quality is very good, watching full HD film clips look great with lots of detail, smooth frame rates and little motion blur, the colours are vibrant yet realistic. You can tweak the white balance of the overall phone in the options to alter the screen to your preference. Regarding the Home/Back navigation buttons, I would of preferred them not to be on the screen (as per the One X) to make the most of the increased screen size, so overall the usable screen space is about the same on the Z2 as the One X, although most media apps use full screen and these buttons disappear which is a good compromise. One issue I have found is the auto adjust brightness is set slightly dimmer than I would prefer, not sure if this can be tweaked in the options. It comes with a screen protector in the box which is a nice addition, the screen protector has a matt texture to it which helps with glare. I’ve not tried the phone in bright sunshine yet.
I like the simplicity of the Z2 software being close to stock android and the bloatware is also minimal. Messaging, email, contact and the dialler apps all seem intuitive and easy to use, typing is very easy and I seem to be making less mistakes on the Sony keyboard, this could be due to the bigger screen. The overall performance has been very quick, no lag, stuttering or waiting for any apps, web pages load up noticeably faster than the One X. The double tap screen wake is a nice ‘borrowed’ feature from the LG G2, it works really well. I’m hoping that future android OS updates won’t be delayed too much by O2 as was the case with the HTC One X.
The Z2 seems to have far better reception for both cellular and Wi-Fi signals than the One X, a big thumbs up from me. I was also impressed with the call quality, very clear audio. The external speakers also being located on the front are a massive plus especially for hands free, I no longer have to cup the rear speaker to direct the sound towards me! The external speakers can go very loud yet remain clear, I was impressed by the depth of bass from such small speaker grills. The phone comes bundled with noise cancelling headphones which I was excited to try out as I have never experienced noise cancelling technology before, my first impression is the quality of sound from the headphones was very good, not ground breaking, but good. Mid-range and high frequency sounds have great clarity and the bass levels are ok at normal volumes, but when the volume is turned up above 70 – 80% the low frequency sounds start to distort, this was disappointing for me as the headphones do sounds a little quiet around 50% volume when watching movies and need turning up a bit to bring them alive. When I activated the noise cancelling technology I was a bit underwhelmed at first by the difference it made, having never experienced noise cancellation I was expecting complete background silence which was not the case, it felt about half as loud. Even though I was initially underwhelmed, the noise cancellation does reduce the background noise and therefore improve the audio quality to a small degree which does make it worthwhile.
I've had a brief play with the camera, the pictures look ok/good, I haven’t delved very deep into the options and most of my shots were indoors in low light, the photos have a good level of detail and the colours seem to match closely to what my naked eyes can see. I had a play with the slow motion which worked well, the video was smoothed out by the image stabilisation which also worked well making the video look a bit more professional, saying that I did witness some of the un-stable auto focus some reviews have mentioned during filming, hopefully this can be improved with a software update. I haven’t exported anything to look at on a bigger screen yet, looking forward to see the results. The dedicated camera button on the side makes taking photos much easier compared to the on-screen button of the One X.
On its first full charge I have been using it today for 7 hours and 10 minutes with the screen on for 1 hour and 29 minutes and it has 73% battery remaining of which 53% battery usage is from the screen. It is running 2 email accounts syncing every 15 minutes + Facebook and twitter, etc. Much better than my One X which would be down to around 30 - 40% battery by this point. It’s looking like a solid 5 - 6 hours of screen on time over a full day.
The charging/memory card covers seem well designed, but I wouldn't rely on their durability for daily charging, I have ordered a non-Sony branded magnetic charging dock so the covers don’t need to be touched, hopefully it will fit!
I’ve waffled on a bit, but hopefully if you are undecided about getting one it will help you to choose either way. Overall I really like the phone, Sony have fine-tuned what they do best to create a powerful and high quality media munching device, which ticks all the boxes for me.
