Were back, and better than ever! To those who missed us we apologise but be assured our little break was for the good of the blog and the reason for our absence will soon be self-evident. So, that’s enough small talk let’s get down to business.
We take a deeper look at the Sony Xperia Z highlighting its Pro and Cons from an unbiased perspective; we do the product research so you don’t have to!
Sony Xperia Z
The Sony Xperia Z, most will agree that it is a behemoth of a device in every respect. With its 5” Full HD 1080p Reality Display, 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor, 13 megapixel camera, running Android Jelly Bean (v4.1.2) and 4G LTE the Xperia Z is still one of the most powerful devices – if not the most, announced so far this year. Its perks don’t end there, the Xperia Z is also equip with NFC for lightening fast media transfer between devices, Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 for crisper images and videos, Exmor RS for mobile with High Dynamic Range for clear camera images in poor lighting conditions, WALKMAN – the original portable music player app and battery STAMINA mode which exponentially improves battery standby time by automatically shutting down battery – draining apps when the screen is off.
But wait, there’s more! The Xperia Z is IP55 and IP57certified, meaning this device is dust-proof and water resistance to a depth of 1 meter for up to 30 minutes. To top it all off the Xperia Z has a tempered glass finish on both its back and front, to give it that smooth premium feel.
Xperia Z
It is a good device – a very good device, but like every new piece of tech it has its fair share of flaws. The Xperia Z is ‘water resistance’ not ‘water-proof’, so you could run water over it to give it a quick rinse under a tap but I would definitely not recommend taking if for a swim. Some early adopters have complained that after regular exposure to water the devices built-in stereo speaker will cease to function – luckily theirs a quick fix for that. Submerging the device in a container of rice for a few hours should whisk the devices speaker back to life. But admittedly I can think of very few Smartphone’s that will fair that well under similar conditions.
Another issue worth bring to light is regarding the devices Wi-Fi, it seems that the devices has poor compatibility with certain Netgear Wi-Fi routers resulting in poor Wi-Fi reception at distances that other devices would have good reception.
Sony Xperia Z
Also some early adopters cited than on some occasions the Xperia Z would fail to come out of standby and become unresponsive for an indefinite amount of time. The only way to get the device running again would be to perform a hard reset – removing the battery for the device and placing it back in the putting the device on again, but due to the fact that the Xperia Z’s battery isn’t removable this puts some users in a real pickle. This isn’t a problem that’s new to Sony devices either, it’s plagued earlier Xperia models such as the Xperia X8 and Xperia Neo, luckily this glitch is usually rectified with a timely update.
The most troubling issue with the Xperia Z is regarding problems encountered while accessing microSD cards. Although this problem seems to be mostly specific to 32GB microSD cards. A significant amount of Xperia Z users have complained about their microSD cards being ‘... removed unexpectedly’ repeatedly while still in the phone, thereafter their microSD cards become condemned and unusable by the phone or any other device for that matter. This issue seemed to be triggered during heavy exchange of data between the phone and the micoSD card. Initially the fault was attributed to cheap microSD cards made by SanDisk, but soon realized it was not a fault with the SD card but the device after similar problems were encounter with other brands of SD cards such as Samsung and Kingston. At the time of writing this article the problem still had not been resolved but Sony representatives highlighted that only a relatively small amount of Xperia Z users were experiencing this problem and the problem could be caused by miscellaneous apps installed on their devices.
So there you have it “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” of Sony’s Xperia Z. It has its fair share of flaws, but none of these are deal breakers right? Let your voice be heard! Leave a comment below.
Sources
