Sony Xperia XZ Premium vs XZs: What's the difference

Sony just unveiled its brand new handsets, among which were the Xperia XZ Premium and Xperia XZs. While both of them look like pretty solid devices, there are some key differences between the two that could impact your buying decision if you're planning to go for a Sony handset.

So, let us start with the obvious one – screen size. The display on the XZ Premium measures at 5.5 inches, effectively pushing it into phablet territory. So, if you're not too keen on having that large of a screen, the XZs would probably suit you better, as its display has a 5.2-inch diagonal. However, you will be sacrificing quality too, as the XZ Premium's main benefit in the display department is the 4K resolution, which should provide a sharper image than the 1080 x 1920 Full HD one that the XZs employs.

The rest of the differences are not that obvious and we need to dig into the specs sheet to find them. The big news here is the difference in chipsets. The XZ Premium comes with the latest and greatest Qualcomm silicon – Snapdragon 835, and an Adreno 540 graphical processor. In the meantime, the XZs stuck with the Snapdragon 820 we saw in last year's Sony flagship.

We're surprised to find out that when it comes to the cameras, the two phones are exactly the same. Both handsets are getting Sony's new 19 MP camera sensor which can shoot 960 fps videos. This means that we can enjoy the super slow-motion output sooner than expected.

What didn't surprise us, though, is the bigger battery capacity of the XZ Premium. The higher-resolution display probably needs more power, and we don't know whether the Snapdragon 835 puts more strain on the battery or not. So it only makes sense for the bigger device to come with 3,230 mAh power pack, as opposed to the 2,900 mAh of the XZs. It's important to note that the beefier battery doesn't mean more battery life, so we'll have to test the devices before we can judge how the bigger power pack performs.

In the memory department, both devices come with 4 GB of RAM. The XZs has two variations – one with 32 GB of internal memory, and one with 64 GB, while the XZ Premium has a single version with 64 GB of internal memory. Good news is that both phones support MicroSD cards of up to 256 GB.

In terms of connectivity, the XZ Premium definitely outpowers the XZs, as the phablet comes with LTE Category 16 modem. This means that it could reach up to 1 Gbps download speed, at least on paper. In reality, it's a bit more complicated and it's highly unlikely for the average user to see such speeds.

On paper, both devices look pretty solid. And while the XZ Premium is obviously the superior phone, when it comes to specs, in case you don't want to deal with the 5.5-inch display, you will have to sacrifice some performance and go for the XZs.

Which one of the two would you prefer? Do let us know in the comments below the post.