On opening the box, I found the Xperia Z in my favourite category: brick weight. It does feel like a decent well made device especially that big power button just wanting to be pressed. The first game you play is where on earth do I put my sim card followed by er, where’s the charging port? Once you realise they are under flush fitting covers and believe me, don’t cut your nails short, it’s a matter of a few seconds to find them all.
This is where I start having an infuriating love-hate relationship with the Z. It threw a hissy fit after the initial updates - volume control didn’t work whilst having headphones in for a couple of days. Then for no reason, it just started working! Location based wifi is another thing it did unexpectedly after I’d moved wifi locations and wifi stopped working. Switching wifi off then on again brought up the request. After accepting that, it just worked as I wanted to. That was really the first couple of days after which point, it just became better as a daily device. I suspect it may be a bit of memory management causing the problem.
Since then (I won’t bother repeating the specs in this review here) I’ve learnt to love this phone over my previous trial of the Note 3. That surprised me as the S-pen is brilliant for notes but what does win me over is the sound quality. Whatever Sony has done audio-wise, it is fantastic and my mp3s really do sound good through earphones. Even an evening revisiting 80’s, 90’s and 00’s videos on Youtube was a pleasurable audio and visual experience but that’s my taste in music 😉 Which leads me to a disappointing placement of the speaker: they’ve put it on the lower right that can be easily be covered up by a right-handed palm fold. Then again, it’s handy if you need to mute a boring conference call whilst ordering a coffee.
Camera wise, it does live up to expectations though could have done with more manual functions. I only discovered it has a auto macro mode by accident! Sadly, the weather has been miserable again so no decent shots I'd like to upload.
Thankfully, Sony has enabled the share function for practically everything so you can save everything to somewhere other than the phone itself. That lovely great big metal button can’t be used to take a picture and just turns the device off. You can set the volume keys as a physical shutter button but they’ve missed a trick here.
My current favourite app is Feedly and the screen size does lend itself to reading articles quite nicely. Evernote, another of my well used favourites, seems to be better integrated within Sony’s version of Android as in it feels more natural than on my Nexus 4 and on the Note 3. On that point, the variation from POVA (Plain Ol’ Vanilla Android) isn’t too far away though there is very little I miss between my Nexus 4 on KitKat and this 4.3. Apart from the ability to print to a HP printer which was new in KitKat, I’m not overly concerned about it being on 4.3. It works and works well. There are a few Sony specific apps linking to Sony’s app store but nothing you’ll miss when removing them.
Battery life: expect a good days usage in stamina mode. Admittedly, I’ve been quite active with it so charging has been more than I usually do. Outside of wifi and in a 3G area, the Z has been very fast. On the downside yet upside, TuGo wasn’t great on the Z and I had to remove it. People complained that I was at the end of a long tube or under water! Upside, the GSM reception and quality was excellent considering the variability of the signal in my area.
An understated feature is the Car mode. Essentially this makes big icons for the common apps on a couple of screens and unsurprisingly, it makes things easier to get to access whilst travelling. The potential of this is far beyond car mode and in my opinion someone needs to put this on a low-end Android for people who don’t want the confusion of multiple layers of icons.
Marking this against my Nexus 4 which is its direct competitor (well at the time of its launch), the Z is a far better phone. I haven’t handled a Nexus 5 but given my experience now, I wouldn’t consider it as the Sony is a far more polished effort worthy of the premium difference. Against the Note 3, as much as I adored that one, given the choice, I’d go for the Z now as its a more capable device to take around and use without worry about breaking it. I seriously want to get rid of my Nexus 4 now and get the Z!
However and it is a big however if you want to consider getting one here are two things. If you can get this at a end-of-line deal, its a great phone and you won’t be disappointed. Its currently at £341 on the Sony site and may go cheaper. The other factor, especially going on contract, is that the Z1 Compact is about to be launched which on paper, has a dedicated camera button, looks even better and has caught my eye as a phone to go for. Smaller screen but based on the Z’s quality it looks like it is going to be a very popular phone.
Finally, I want a white one. The black really does show up fingerprints rather disturbingly. Only because I was using it more!
