The new Sony Xperia Z3 landed at TechView HQ ten days ago and as we covered in our initial impressions, Sony have made some tweaks which have largely resolved past grievances with their range. Boasting a more impressive display and more ergonomically designed rounded edges, the handset now arguably offers the sleekest experience on a current smartphone.
As we’re about halfway through the reviews process (usually two weeks and for some handsets a little longer), let’s take a look at whether the Xperia Z3 still impresses:
Design
The design of the Xperia Z3 and the new rounded edges is one improvement that Sony have made that makes the Xperia Z3 such a joy to use – instead of chamfered edges that restrict your hold on the handset, the rounded curves sit perfectly within the palm of your hand and are excellently designed.
However the rear of the Xperia Z3 does have its own issues as the glass finish attracts a plethora of fingerprints which in turn makes the handsets slippery and more likely to fall from grasp. The incredible Full HD display definitely makes up for this and we’ve found the ambient light sensor to be particularly effective at ensuring the handset brightness quickly adjusts to the ambient surroundings.
Performance
Like many of its rivals, the Xperia Z3 comes packed with a range of features and specs that are enough to satisfy any spec-loving gadget enthusiast and the premium specs list includes a 5 inch display, quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor with 3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage with a microSD card for expansion and the Android 4.4.2 KitKat OS with Sony’s own lightweight user interface on top.
For the majority of the past ten days, the handset has remained super smooth with very little signs of lag but we have noticed that sometimes there is a slight delay when switching between applications. Other than a few parts of the experience that need slight tweaks, Sony has delivered an impressive performance that can rival anything else on the market.
Battery Life
This is where Sony have completely blown us away – the Xperia Z3 has incredible battery life and regularly lasted past the advertised maximum of two days on a single charge. On average we’ve found that with heavy usage, we’re still able to get over a day’s usage and this means the Xperia Z3 has better battery life than a range of phablets which is a credit to Sony’s optimisations.
Quite often companies choose to boast their maximum theoretical battery life as that when in laboratory conditions but Sony seems to have taken real usage into account and based on our initial testing, it’s clear that they actually may have understated the battery life.
Conclusion
So far the Xperia Z3 blew us away at first and has continued to do so over the past ten days. A few cracks may have appeared but it would only take a little refinement in the next firmware update and Sony would have had a handset that rivals the very best. As it stands, there’s nothing to particularly dislike [...]
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