Why You Can Trust CNET Sony Xperia Z (T-Mobile) review: Good looks only take this phone so far
The Xperia Z has an attractive design and takes great pictures, but its short battery life and lackluster processor diminish our enthusiasm for it.
Sony hopes to tempt potential phone shoppers with the Xperia Z's unique mix of durability, sexy design, and a powerful camera. Now available for preorder at T-Mobile for $99.99 down (and 24 payments of $20 per month) and hitting stores on July 17, it's billed as the company's top mobile device and has a lot to prove. Sadly, the Xperia Z's pokey imaging system and short battery life can't stand up to the likes of the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, both sold by T-Mobile for the same up-front price. Those competing gadgets add up to better buys, that is unless you absolutely must have a water- and dust-resistant smartphone.
Sony Xperia Z (T-Mobile)
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Design
Looking more like a mysterious monolith than your average smartphone, the Sony Xperia Z's almost featureless rectangular shape doesn't give up its secrets easily. Its glossy black, all-glass chassis has a smooth surface that's practically blank and a front face devoid of any physical buttons.
A 3-megapixel front-facing camera, tiny notification light, and earpiece above and a minute speaker below are the only distractions from the Xperia Z's huge 5-inch screen. As a matter of fact, the phone's sole tangible controls sit on the Xperia's right edge -- a large circular power key placed next to a trim volume bar.
That doesn't mean the handset lacks the typical allotment of ports and connections. On the contrary, the Xperia Z hides them under protective flaps to guard against rude intrusion from dirt and liquids. Indeed, Sony claims that the Z meets the IP55 and IP57 international protocols for durability. That means you can immerse the phone in up to 3 feet of water for 30 minutes without any issues. The same goes for exposure to dust and other fine particles, which will have a hard time slipping through the Xperia Z's defenses to its sensitive electronics.
Located on the left side is a Micro-USB port for charging and for transfering files, and a slot that accepts a microSD card for additional storage memory. Under a flap on the right side is the phone's SIM card slot. Up top you'll find a 3.5mm headphone jack, also tucked away under a protective cover.
Despite the Xperia Z's enhanced durability, it remains extremely thin, flat and pocket-friendly. Measuring a mere 0.31 inch thick by 5.47 inches tall and 2.79 inches wide, I found it svelte enough to slip into tight jeans pockets and compact enough to lose in messenger bags. That said, the phone's angular edges and flat back make it less comfortable to hold than the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, which have gently curved backs. The Xperia Z's battery is also embedded, so you can't swap it out for a fresh power pack in a pinch.
Another hit against the Xperia Z's design is its slick, or more accurately, too-glossy surface. Hey, I like to think of myself as a relatively hygienic individual. I take showers daily and frequently wash my hands, a necessity for living in New York City. Unfortunately the Xperia's glass chassis attracted face grease and fingerprints almost instantly when I handled it. I guess Sony figures you can simply run the phone under the faucet to get it squeaky-clean in a flash.
Screen
Sony makes a point of praising the Xperia Z's 5-inch full-HD-resolution display (1,920x1,080 pixels), and with justification. It's big and bright and produces vivid colors for enjoying photos, video, or documents and text. Even so, when I viewed the Xperia's screen side by side with the HTC One (both set to maximum brightness) I found the One's display brighter and more uniformly lit -- even seen off-angle.
By comparison, the Xperia Z's screen dimmed dramatically when I tilted it either horizontally or vertically. Additionally, while the Samsung Galaxy S4's AMOLED display doesn't get as bright as either the Xperia's or the One's, it trumps both in terms of lusciously dark black levels and richly saturated colors along with extremely wide viewing angles.
Software and features
With its current line of handsets, Sony has finally upped its software game. Just like the less rugged Xperia ZL, the Xperia Z features all the modern capabilities of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. This includes seamless integration with Google's large stable of services such as Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Plus social networking.
It's not the most recent version of Android, version 4.2, but only a handful of phones currently boast this, such as the LG Nexus 4, HTC One Google Play Edition, and Samsung Galaxy S4 (both carrier-branded and Google Play Edition models).
You also get support for the Google Now advanced search and virtual assistant plus a corresponding widget. In addition to letting you use voice commands to set reminders and check your schedule, Google Now provides automatic search results and timely information based on your location.
Best of all, the feature will adapt as you use it more, showing the information it expects you to value most. In my case that happens to be New York Mets scores and stats -- you know they're looking pretty good this year!
T-Mobile managed to slip a few of its own apps onto the Xperia Z as well. There's a My Account application to check up on your billing, data usage, and other phone plan information with. The T-Mobile TV app serves up both canned and live video programming from the likes of Fox, Disney, ESPN, the AP, and Bravo. Keep in mind that to watch anything other than Fox and the AP the service costs an additional $9.99 per month.
Sony's special sauce
The Xperia Z doesn't run vanilla Android. Rather, Sony has grafted its own UI on top of Google's operating system. Thankfully it's a light alteration consisting mainly of a tweaked lock screen and notification shade. For example, the Xperia lets you jump straight to the camera or music player from the lock screen. The phone also offers six home screens instead of plain Android Jelly Bean's five.
Of course this wouldn't be a real Sony smartphone if it didn't hawk content from the company's library of digital entertainment, called the Sony Entertainment Network. A Video Unlimited app serves up movies and TV shows for download, either to rent or purchase. Be warned, though, that once you rent video and begin playing it, you have up 24 hours to enjoy it. After this time period expires, it vanishes in a virtual puff of smoke. Additionally you're locked into viewing video content on the specific phone you downloaded it to.
The Music Unlimited application lets subscribers listen to streamed or cached songs in addition to a range of genre-based music stations, provided you pay a $9.99 monthly fee. The only way to download music to the phone for listening offline, however, is to add tracks to a playlist, then set that playlist for offline access. You also must kick the Music Unlimited app into offline mode. Needless to say I found all the steps required to watch and listen to Sony's digital content on the Xperia Z add up to a confusing and often frustrating procedure.
Performance
The Sony Xperia Z comes equipped with a potent 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor backed up by 2GB of RAM. That's enough horsepower to drive the phone's Android software at a quick clip; I didn't run into any serious hiccups, whether flipping through home screens or launching apps. Still, the Xperia lacks the pep and verve I've come to expect from competing flagship handsets such as the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Subjecting the Xperia Z to synthetic benchmarks confirmed that the device lacks the speed of elite superphones powered by Qualcomm's fresh silicon, namely the Snapdragon 600. The Xperia Z's Quadrant score of 7,976 isn't too shabby but it's nowhere near as high as what the HTC One (12,194) and Samsung Galaxy S4 (11,381) can muster.
| Performance: Sony Xperia Z (T-Mobile) | |
|---|---|
| Average LTE download speeds | 11.37Mbps |
| Average LTE upload speed | 6.9Mbps |
| App download (CNET) | 3.72MB in 7.1 seconds |
| CNET mobile site load | 5.6 seconds |
| CNET desktop site load | 12.22 seconds |
| Boot time | 29.8 seconds |
| Camera boot time | 1.49 seconds |
Call quality
I tested the Xperia Z on T-Mobile's GSM network in New York and came away very impressed with its call quality. As with my experience with the unlocked Xperia ZL (AT&T GSM), callers said my voice was warm and lifelike with no distracting static, pops, or digital artifacts. I also thought that the words people spoke came through the earpiece clearly and with plenty of volume.
Data speeds
Since the Xperia Z connects to T-Mobile's new 4G LTE network where available, I was able to enjoy swift data access. While testing the phone in New York I clocked an average download speed of 11.37Mbps, while the average upload came in at a respectable 6.9Mbps.
Battery life
I'm sorry to say that the Xperia Z's battery life was disappointingly brief. The handset persevered for only 5 hours and 41 minutes during the CNET Labs video drain benchmark. While that's beyond the claimed video playback time Sony touts for the device (5 hours, 30 minutes), it's much less than both the HTC One (8 hours, 43 minutes) and the Samsung Galaxy S4 (10 hours, 30 minutes).
Camera
If you own or have ever operated a Sony Cyber-shot point-and-shoot camera, you'll find the Xperia Z's camera app a trusty friend. Like the company's dedicated imaging gadgets, the software offers a wide range of features, scene modes, and settings, all wrapped up in an interface pulled directly from Sony's compact cameras. With a 13-megapixel sensor and resolution options starting at VGA and topping out at 12 megapixels, the Xperia Z's camera shoots images of superb quality for a smartphone.
Indoors, shots taken within the studio were clear, exhibited lifelike color, and had crisp detail. White balance was also impressively executed and images were correctly exposed.
Once outdoors, the Xperia Z further flaunted its imaging chops. Details were sharp, and colors in flowers, trees, grass, and the attire of pedestrians were vibrant but not oversaturated. In this way it was similar to the Xperia ZL (which uses the same imaging system). Note that Sony's draconian image processing often gives pictures an almost cartoonlike flatness, especially noticeable when you crop in for a closer look.
The camera app's many features, however, including modes for panorama and HDR, add extra and welcome flair. The Xperia Z really performs well when shooting macro photos up close. Those of you out there into snapping tight shots of nature will find a good friend in this device. Images of flowers I took had particularly engaging colors and detail that rivaled what I typically see from more capable point-and-shoot cameras.
Of course the Xperia Z's camera isn't without its flaws, a few of which are rather large. Sony sets the phone to use what it calls a "Superior auto" mode by default. While it's smart enough to automatically detect and select appropriate scene modes depending on environmental conditions, it seems to require a lot of processing power. So, if Superior decides HDR or other scene modes are called for, especially while snapping multiple shots in succession, you're likely to see double images of moving subjects. Choosing the phone's Normal mode helped fix the problem, but not completely.
Also frustrating is the camera's slow shot-to-shot time, which makes grabbing photos of energetic and unpredictable subjects (like kids and pets) a challenge. Usually I had to wait about a second between each shot I tried to take.
Conclusion
Let me spell this out right up front. The Xperia Z is the best mobile handset Sony has ever built. Unfortunately, in today's cutthroat mobile world populated with two mighty titans locked in a struggle to the death for mobile phone supremacy, Samsung and HTC (three, if you count Apple), Sony's efforts are not quite enough.
At the same price, $99.99 down on T-Mobile, both the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4 offer faster processors, better screens, and way longer battery life than the Xperia Z. The Xperia's camera, while it snaps superb photos, can't match the agility of the GS4's or One's imaging system.
That's why the clear Android choice on T-Mobile remains the Galaxy S4 if you want every feature under the sun in a smartphone, while the HTC One will appeal to shoppers craving luxurious build quality. I suggest buying the Xperia Z only if a water- and dust-resistant phone is your main objective or you are particularly loyal to the Sony brand and entertainment ecosystem.