Gadgetory

hey Joshua of agar from Android Authority what's going on everybody and today we're comparing two phones that for the most part are exactly the same this is the Sony Xperia Z versus the Sony Xperia ZL obviously we're going to start with the look and feel the Xperia Z brought a design we don't see too often these days a very blocky rectangular designed with rigid corners this rather unique look has brought the Z quite a bit of design praise and for good reason it really is a quite sleek glass encased Zone glass on both sides makes the Z very fingerprint prone however and the button layout is on the right side with the large and hard to miss silver power button above the volume rockers all ports are then covered by pieces of plastic to help one of the Z's main draws its water and dust resistance the Xperia Z L on the other hand isn't all glass but the front is reminiscent of that rectangular design there is however a really cool LED light that isn't just a circular poles found at the bottom instead it is like a line that is very Sony like in spirit the back though is made of a textured plastic that does help lower the slippage the low cover on the bottom houses the SD and micro SIM slots and is arguably the only real eyesore the button layout is a little different the silver power button is in the middle again while the volume rockers are now above but below the power button is the CIO's main edition here which is the dedicated camera button and as far as the size goes it is about five millimeters shorter than the Z but a few millimeters thicker this slightly smaller size in terms of its form factor does make a difference though so for designed the Xperia Z is the phone that causes more heads to turn and I'm being serious there whenever I had the Xperia Z out someone wanted to know what it was because it wasn't only different it was also quite attractive however the CEO gets the point for feel because it is the most compact body you can find on a 5 inch screen the real estate on the front is over 75% covered in just the 1080p screen and when the bezel is that small the body shrinks too so this is probably one of the best handling phones if not the best handling phone with a 5 inch screen and that's really darn cool speaking of the screen there really isn't much of a contest here both the Z and the Z L have a 5-inch 1080p screen capable of 441 pixels per inch they are very sharp displays that benefit from the Bravia Engine especially when you just look at them dead-on but unfortunately you're going to get the same bad viewing angles on both devices as the fidelity of the displays are greatly degraded at even moderate angles sure you can change the white balance on the ZL screen in the options or the settings but that doesn't fix the bad angles so as long as you keep your eyes straight onto the display you'll get a great experience in what basically seems like a small sony tv in the palm of your hand hardware in performance turns this into a story of what exactly do you want performance wise you get the same package in either device the 1.5 gigahertz Snapdragon s4 pro with an Adreno 320 GPU 2 gigabytes of RAM are available and then you have 16 or 32 gigabytes of memory expandable by SD card slots but the hardware in the Z is all water resistant up to one meter in water which is pretty nice it makes for a cool trick to show off to your friends but can also be a saving grace in an accident if someone spills water or what-have-you onto your device meanwhile the not waterproof or water-resistant Xperia Z L has an IR blaster that allows it to communicate with various devices like TVs or blu-ray players which effectively make it replace your remotes unfortunately both have their advantages in these cases and thus fulfill particularly different needs water resistance is cool but so is natively being able to turn on pretty much any TV you might have we got another tie here battery life doesn't change this result at all either even though the Xperia Z L has 40 more milliamps in its battery than the one found in the Z which is at 23:30 you still get the same decent battery life either way as far as software goes you do get the same jellybean 4.1.2 operating system covered in Xperia flavours in either phone they're nice putting together jellybean features with Ice Cream Sandwich looks and Xperia additions like small apps for multitasking the only real advantage here is found in the Xperia Z L because of its IR blaster you get the remote control application which allows you to take control of pretty much any device that you might have for media like TVs set-top boxes for cable or blu-ray players it may not work right away but there is a manual setup mode so that you can make it work when you need to with a little bit of effort it does provide for extra functionality in the Xperia Z L and that's why it gets the slight edge in this one and finally we have the cameras the rear cameras on both devices are 13 megapixel shooter is powered by Exmor RS sensors both are more than decent in quality and superior auto works quite well the Xperia ZL has a rather unique relic in its toolbox though that dedicated camera button it works really nicely and kind of reminds you above days that were long gone when most phones came with a dedicated camera button but the real story here is in the front cameras the Z has a two point two megapixel shooter while Desio only has two megapixels however it's the placement of the Xperia Z us front-facing camera in the lower right corner that is quite deliberate apparently Sony found that users look lower into the screen then top located cameras can really capture so lowering its position makes things look much more natural during a video call while that might be a nice gimmick I personally don't know anyone that truly cares if their callers are looking right into their eyes so ultimately it comes down to whether or not you really want that dedicated camera button at the sacrifice of water resistance the performance when it comes down to it is the same on both so you can take your pick between these two so in the end was it really any surprise that both of these phones are so neck-and-neck ultimately you're getting the same performance in two bodies that fulfill different needs I really think that both phones are really great so it comes down to which feature means more to you water resistance is really good but I personally love the smaller form factor of the Xperia Z L those few millimeters do make a difference and thus are preferred to have the most compact 5-inch phone available right now the IR blaster and dedicated camera button are both bonuses to this so if these features altogether equal greater than water resistance for you then the ZL is your phone that's exactly what happened with me how do you feel about this comparison let us know in the comments below or at and Road Authority calm and remember that we're always putting up great content 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