Sony Xperia Z1 Review

You can now read:

• Sony Xperia Z1S Review 
• Sony Xperia Z1 Compact Review
• Sony Xperia Z2 Review

Introduction

Sony introduced its Xperia Z flagship in the beginning of the year, and while the smartphone had a lot going for it, it was still somewhat rough around the edges. It had fancy front and back panels made of glass, but boring, rubbery sides; the screen was large and had a high resolution, but its gamma and viewing angles were lacking; the camera was 13 MP and featured the promising Exmor RS sensor, but the quality of the pictures was so-so.

With so much to fix, Sony hasn't even waited until next year to introduce its new top model. Instead, the company is already gearing up to release its new flagship – the Xperia Z1. As we can all see right away, the Xperia Z1 is like a heavily upgraded version of its predecessor. It feels quite familiar, yet substantially improved in pretty much every area. By the looks of it, Sony has done more than enough in order to bring those elements where the Z was lacking to the necessary premium level. However, whether this has been enough to actually leapfrog the competition is what we'll seek to answer right here and now!

In the box:

• USB cable
• Wall-charger
• Earphones with handsfree and a clip
• Cleaning cloth
• Screen protector

Design

The Sony Xperia Z1 has almost the same external design as its predecessor, except... it now features a nice metal frame around the sides, replacing the bland rubber material used by the Z. The phone's design looks much more complete now, and the feeling you get when you have the Xperia Z1 in your hands is that of working with a very high-quality piece of machinery. The front and rear panels are still made of flat, tempered glass, reminiscent of the iPhone 4/4s design language.

The Xperia Z1 is a beautiful phone and we commend Sony for coming up with this design. It beats Samsung's offerings (in the design department) and can go toe to toe with almost any other high-end smartphone in the industry.

As we said, in-hand feel is just the way it should be – awesome, but we do have a relatively big issue in this regard and it has to do with the size of the Z1. With substantial bezels around the display, the Xperia Z1 takes quite a bit of room (5.69 x 2.91 x 0.33 inches) in your palm. It's definitely bulkier than Samsung's Galaxy S4 (which measures 5.38 x 2.75 x 0.31 inches), or HTC's One (5.41 x 2.69 x 0.37 inches), or even LG's G2 (5.45 x 2.79 x 0.35 inches), which packs a bigger, 5.2” display in its smaller body. Still, we do like the classy, rectangular shape of the Z1.

Sony's new device is also heavier than most other competitors. It weighs 6.00 oz (170 g), compared to the Samsung Galaxy S4's 4.59 oz (130 g), as well as the HTC One's and LG G2's 5.04 oz (143 g). Wow, the Xperia Z1 is truly one weighty smartphone, but it's OK with us.

You can find a bunch of things around the sides of the Xperia Z1. Of course, we get the new circular power button on the right hand side, which doesn't feel particularly bad, but isn't great either. The volume rocker that's positioned slightly below is a similar affair, as it works fine, but is kind of small to be considered really comfortable to use. Finally, we get the tiny camera shutter key near the lower end of the right hand side, and almost surprisingly, this one is actually great. The button is very easy to press, and its two steps (for autofocus and actual picture taking) are very well defined.

The Micro SIM card slot and microSD card slot, as well as the microUSB port are all hidden under protective flaps, which don't cause any trouble. What's more, they are designed in such a way so as to kind of blend in with the rest of the surface of the sides.

You'll also be delighted to know that the Sony Xperia Z1's glass and metal shell is IP 58-certified, meaning that it's water- and dust-resistant. Something that no other Android flagship can offer at the moment.

Display

The Xperia Z1 is making full use of Sony's so-called Triluminos screen technology, and the improvement in image quality since the Xperia Z is obvious. Sony's Triluminos technology attempts to create a more 'intelligent' backlighting for the display through the use of the so-called 'quantum dots' - extremely small particles that emit light at preset wavelengths. The ultimate goal is to enable the reproduction of a wider array of natural colors.

With its decent characteristics, the 5" 1080x1920 display of the Z1 may not be a state-of-the-art LCD panel (it's TFT, not IPS), but it is still very good looking. As with any other 5" 1080p screen, the pixel density is incredibly high at 441 ppi, so everything looks extremely clean, without even the slightest form of pixelization.

Color balance of the Xperia Z1's display is also great, with only slightly dominant blue. As a whole, color reproduction is very accurate, with an average color error (Delta E) of about 4 (which is very good). Average color temperature is about 7000 K (kelvins), with the reference value considered to be 6500 K. In comparison, the Apple iPhone 5 has a color temperature of about 7300 K, so the Xperia Z1 is even slightly closer to what's considered the perfectly natural balance between red and blue. Sony is still having some touble with the gamma, as the Xperia Z1 averages around 2, with a reference value of 2.2. This is because the highlights tend to appear a bit too bright on this display, potentially causing some lost detail in whiter areas.

In terms of brightness, the Sony Xperia Z1 has a powerful enough output to guarantee fine outdoor viewing. It's just slightly worse than the iPhone 5, but it definitely qualifies as one of the better screens in this respect. It's much better than the Galaxy S4's screen, for example.

Sadly, viewing angles are still terrible. Even at smaller angles, brightness starts to drop noticeably, while the whole image almost immediately gets washed out unrecognizable. It's a pity, because it's a great display when you're facing it directly.

The Xperia Z1 supports the so-called X-Reality image enhancement technology, which attempts to boost the quality of photos and video viewed on the phone. Indeed, media that's displayed on the Z1's screen using the X-Reality engine looks very cool. For the most part, there's not rocket-science involved with X-Reality, as it tweaks things such as the contrast of the image, the sharpness, colors and other similar stuff, in order to come up with a more impressive picture.

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Interface

The Sony Xperia Z1 comes with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, which is a bit disappointing having in mind that Android 4.3 is already available to users of Nexus devices. We aren't really optimistic when it comes to Sony's ability to bring timely software updates to its devices, but since this is the flagship smartphone we're talking about, we hope that the company will do well at supporting it.

On top of Android 4.2.2, we find Sony's custom user interface. Overall, the UI is not so in-your-face, but it is quite comprehensive. In our opinion, this is one of the more polished custom UIs for Android. It's certainly not the most feature-rich, but it's quite lively, making it feel fun to use.

The custom homescreen is very easy to get used to. Sony has done a good job at creating an intuitive experience that makes things like icon and widget placements (and resizing, too) easy as pie. Sony has found a good use for the pinch-in gesture. In the Xperia Z1, it initiates the homescreen editing screen, where you can easily add/discard homescreen pages, add wigets/apps, change the wallpaper, or the theme.

A new addition to the otherwise standard main menu is the leftmost panel, which lets you change the sorting or filtering of your app catalog, as well as initiate the Uninstall mode. This one's a bit irritating, as you can accidentally reveal it while browsing through the main menu, in case you do a swipe-right gesture from the left edge of the screen.

All of the essential apps like Phone, Contacts, Messaging and so on have been customized. They are quite simplistic and straightforward, which isn't a bad thing, and thanks to their redesign, their appearance is in line with the rest of the user interface. We'll get back to the core applications, after we go over the silicon!

Processor and Memory

Powered by the potent Snapdragon 800 SoC, the Sony Xperia Z1 is a true beast. Performance will never be an issue with this handset, at least considering the current generation of software available for Android. Overall system performance is also great, with no visible hiccups or slowdowns. The experience isn't so delay-free as on the iPhone 5 and up, but all in all, the Z1 is speedy enough. It's on par with the G2 and the other Android powerhouses out there. The GPU found in the Snapdragon 800 SoC — Adreno 330 — is equally powerful. You can easily run every game out there and you'll enjoy sky-high frame-rates at all times.

Sony has installed the healthy 2 gigs of RAM on the Xperia Z1, which guarantees smooth performance even when you have multiple heavy apps running in the background. The Sony Xperia Z1 comes with the humble 16 GB of internal storage, but thankfully, it also gives you the option to install a microSD card for additional storage space. You can't buy the Z1 with a larger amount of internal space, but that won't be such a big deal for most consumers.

Camera

The beefy 20.7 MP camera of the Sony Xperia Z1 is one of its key features. With a new, larger sensor with a size of 1/2.3" (most smartphones feature 1/3.2" sensors), the Z1's camera will have pixels of decent size, despite their greater number. This should help keep noise at reasonable levels. Meanwhile, the aperture is also quite wide (f/2.0), which should help the camera achieve good results in low-light conditions, as it will allow more light to reach the sensor. Finally, the Z1 has a wide-angle lens of 27mm that will allow you to capture more of the scene in front of you.

Thankfully, the user interface is very easy to use, especially when you're sticking with Sony's Superior Auto mode, which attempts to automatically pick the best settings for you, depending on the scene you're trying to photograph. Still, Sony has also included a Manual mode, which allows you to tweak a variety of different settings on your own.

There are also some other interesting camera modes in the Xperia Z1. For example, there's Info Shot, which will attempt to give you useful information about the object that you're photographing. Or, there's also Social Live (powered by Bambuser), which lets you livestream up to 10 minutes of video directly to your Facebook feed – very cool feature indeed! There is, of course, a number of picture effects, as well as the more interesting AR (augmented reality) effects, which kind of blend the real scene in front of you with a 3D scene of your choice. Looking past the limited number of 3D scenes, you can get some interesting results with these settings.


Obviously, the expectations towards this camera will be quite high, and we're happy to say that it doesn't disappoint. Quite the contrary! Images tend to have very realistic, vivid and lively colors. At the same time, the handset doesn't oversaturate or overwarm them to artificially make them look prettier. Exposure is also great most of the time – the dynamic range is good enough to let you take immersive photographs that feature both darker and lighter areas, and it will all look natural and appealing. The only drawback we can find is that some very bright areas sometimes come out overexposed, but this doesn't happen very often.

Details are superb with the Z1's photos – even when compared to some of the best phone cameras out there, such as the G2. If you view the 20.7 MP photos in actual size, you might dislike the mostly pixelized look, but if you scale these gigantic images down to something like 13 MP and compare them to awesome 13 MP photos such as those from the G2, you'll be surprised to find that the Xperia Z1 actually captures detail quite well. Even when viewed in actual size (100%), the Xperia Z1's photos are finer than those of its biggest rivals.

Unfortunately, such superlatives cannot be said about the Z1's night photos. The handset often messes up the exposure, while colors are also somewhat off. The only thing we can do right now is to hope that Sony will improve this aspect of the camera with a future software update.

On the other hand, we simply love the images that the Xperia Z1 takes indoors. Photos have a great sense of depth and detail, with very realistic and pleasing colors. Thankfully, the LED flash also does a very good job, allowing you to illuminate a small scene.



When it comes to video recording, though, this surely isn't the best camera we've seen. Mostly smooth in nature, the 1080p video lacks fine details and fails to impress us. Its quality is OK, but it's nothing earth-shattering. Sadly, a 60 fps option is missing to let us record even smoother video, such as the one on the LG G2.

Call quality

Although not really amazing, the Xperia Z1 does a good job when it comes to sound quality during calls. Loudness is just enough, while voices tend to sound clear enough to be easy to comprehend. Naturally, there's a second mic on the Z1, which is used for noise-cancellation, so your callers should be able to make out what you're saying even if you happen to be in a noisy environment. On the other side of the line, callers are mostly pleased by what they hear, though this will depend on a lot of factors, so the experience may not always be great.

As we said, the loudspeaker is neither very powerful, nor high-quality. It'll do the job if you're in a quieter place, but forget about using it outside when it's noisy.

Battery

Based on the data provided by Sony, the Xperia Z1 should be a champ in terms of battery life. The beefy 3000 mAh battery unit of the smartphone is said to provide about 15 hours of 3G talk-time, and the cool 35 days of 3G stand-by time. If you're using the handset in a 4G area, stand-by time should be just a bit lower at 31 days, which is still a great achievement.

Conclusion

With the Xperia Z1, Sony has finally become truly competitive. The Japanese company has been experiencing great difficulties during the last few years, but after a relatively lengthy transition, it's finally caught up with the big players of the wireless industry.

Design-wise, the Sony Xperia Z1 is a great device. It's definitely a looker – more eye-catchy than most other Android models, and you can easily tell that it's a high-end product,, too, thanks to its solid glass and metal casing. The downside to its exterior is that it's quite bulky when compared to most Android phones with 5” displays out there.

Under the hood, the Z1 doesn't lag behind in any respect. With the powerful Snapdragon 800 and 2 gigs of RAM, the Z1 stands right next to the best Android flagships of the second half of the year.

The pleasant surprise in this whole package — the G Lens camera — finally managed to convince us that Sony has indeed created a winner with the Xperia Z1. The camera easily outperforms any other Android smartphone out there as far as picture-taking goes. Sadly, the video isn't anything spectacular, but at least it's not too bad.

With the Z1, Sony has not only caught up with the competition. It's safe to say that it has even managed to leapfrog it in some areas. We can't say that the Xperia Z1 is the best Android smartphone out there right now, because it doesn't really outshine all the other handsets in each and every area, but it's definitely a wonderful and well-balanced product that will certainly make competing companies, such as Samsung, HTC and LG, want to do even better with their next flagships.

Speaking of the others, if the Xperia Z1 isn't really your cup of tea for some reason, you can simply take a look at the LG G2, Samsung Galaxy S4, or HTC One, which can all be great alternatives to the Sony Xperia Z1.

Software version of the reviewed unit: Android 4.2.2; Build 14.1.G.1.518

You can now read:

• Sony Xperia Z1S Review
• Sony Xperia Z1 Compact Review
• Sony Xperia Z2 Review