Gadgetory

hello there my name is Gary Sims from Android authority now it's fairly well known that Sony's mobile division is struggling in fact really the company has ended into a make-or-break period where if it doesn't see profitability soon and maybe the whole mobile unit could be for the chop and this is the background which we turn to the new Zaid 5 series particularly the z5 compact now I did an unboxing on periscope a few days ago and now it's time for the full review so if you're ready let's go before we get to the review I want to say one thing I did drop this phone while I was videoing it it was up on a shelf it's about this high it was outside the wind blew and the phone fell down it fell straight flat on its face the screen didn't break but you will see there are some scuff marks on the side so if you want to drop test there it was unfortunate the camera wasn't rolling so I couldn't capture it but the phone did survive so please excuse the scuff marks when you see some of the close-ups ok let's go the design of the Zed 5 compact will be instantly familiar to anyone who's acquainted with sony's other Z devices particularly the z3 compact now as you can guess from the compact name this is a smaller version of the z5 premium and the standard Z 5 however it does use exactly the same design language as its bigger siblings including the signature button layout from Sony which includes that dedicated camera button and a large power button in the middle of the right hand side bezel however a downside of Sony's layout is that the volume rocker is towards the bottom right hand side and it really is hard to reach regardless of which hand you are using to hold the phone now going around the device you'll find the 3.5 millimeter a headphone jack along the top on the bottom you'll find the USB port along with a microphone hole there's also a microphone hold up towards the top on the right-hand side you'll find that signature button layout as I've already mentioned and on the left hand side you'll find a flap which protects the SIM card and the SD card and fine enough it also has a strange piece of roll-out plastic which contains the C e and F see see information on it on the front you'll find the 4.6 inch display which has a resolution of 720 p which gives us a pixel density of around 323 on the back of the phone you'll find the 23 megapixel camera and a flash and a couple of Sony logos one thing is sure though the phone has been updated particularly the power button has been changed to incorporate the fingerprint reader the z5 compact remains quintessentially a Sony device so let's talk about the display now since this is the compact version as I've already mentioned it has a 4.6 inch display with a 720p resolution however I must say the screen is very crisp the color reproduction is good due to the triluminos display technology along with the x-reality engine that comes from Sony it's also got great viewing angles because it is an IPS screen and Sony are also included in this model a dynamic contrast enhancer which according to Sony makes the brighter parts of the screen brighter and the darker part a truer deeper black cause the real question is do you want a 4.6 inch display when it comes to watching videos playing games or reading text the smaller display may take some getting used to especially if you're used to a bigger screen already however the trade of course is you have easier handling which of course is what some people want but if you're looking for a high display experience a high performance experience in terms of display the the z5 compact is probably not for you so let's move on to the performance and the hardware now the good news is although this has a smaller screen Sony has not compromised on the specifications the internals are exactly the same almost exactly the same as its bigger siblings you get the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 back by the Adreno 430 GPU and 2 gigabytes of RAM those 32 gigabytes of internal storage and there's the option to add more via the micro SD card slot course you get all the normal connectivity options including NFC Wi-Fi GPS Bluetooth and of course this is a 4G LTE phone the only difference really on the internal specs is at the z5 and the z5 premium come with 3 gigabytes of RAM and they have slightly different battery sizes so let's look at the fingerprint reader the fingerprint reader is built into the power button on the right-hand bezel and if you pick up the phone with your left hand you'll probably want to use your left index finger to unlock the phone if you pick up with your right hand you'll probably want to use your right thumb over all the fingerprint reader is fast I've had to had any miss Reed and it's easy to program the phone also comes with some waterproofing specifications is specifically IP 65 and IP 68 which according to Sony means you don't have to worry if you get caught in the rain or even if you want to wash off some dirt from your phone under the tap however Sony does recommend that you don't put the device completely underwater you don't expose it to seawater and that you don't pour hot drinks on it as for sound there's a 5 compact features dual front-facing speakers that mean the sound is unobstructed when you're placing the phone on a flat surface and it always means the sound is projected up with an outwards from the phone now these speakers can get pretty loud considering this is a 4.6 inch display however at the higher volumes the sound does lose some depth and it can sound a bit tinny a bit squeaky there are a number of audio settings that can be used to improve the sound quality including clear Audio plus and a dynamic normalizer there's also a manual mode which allows you to use an equalizer and also activate various surround sound options personally I found that using the bass boost mode of the equalizer improve the speaker sound reproduction however of course your tastes may differ when it comes to the battery the Sony's said 5 compact packs a 2300 milliamp hour unit which should be enough for a small phone like this considering it has a low resolution screen and of course Sony devices have always been known for their great standby times and for their extra useful power saving modes with modest use you should be able to get a full day's battery life out of this phone and even more if you turn on some of those power saving features a screen on time of between 4 and 6 hours should be very possible as my tests shown you can stream YouTube videos for around 6 hours on one charge or play 3d games for around 4.5 hours now personally during my testing the best I got was 44 hours of standby time which is almost two days with three hours and 49 minutes of screen on time however these numbers were heavily influenced by my snapdragon ten thermal tests which we'll get to in a moment and those tests drain the battery faster than normal before we leave the battery it's worth mentioning that this said five compact supports quick charge 2.0 which means that the phone can be charged up to 80 percent relatively quickly my tests show that you can charge the phone from 10% to 80% in about an hour or two just 50% in about 40 minutes a full charge from 10% to 100% takes one hour and 40 minutes in total now let's talk about the Snapdragon 810 for a moment this CPU of course got a lot of bad press when it first appeared because people reported overheating issues and as a result the thief's CPU speed was throttled and of course therefore the performance dropped now in an effort to rebuild confidence in the Snapdragon 810 Qualcomm released a newer version of the SOC with a 2.1 label on it and it looks like Qualcomm plan has worked because Sony of course has picked up the chip for its lead 5 line as did while way for the Nexus 6p but the question still remains does the 810 version 2.1 overheat now unfortunately the answer is a little more complicated than the question for everyday usage including web browsing email in gaming and using the camera for taking photos I can tell you the phone does not overheat according to my testing using a handheld infrared thermometer gun you can expect the temperature on the back of the phone to raise by a maximum of 9 degrees Celsius during normal usage now to put that into some context a temperature of the top left-hand corner of a samsung galaxy note 5 goes up by 10 degrees when you're playing Epic Citadel for 20 minutes however this isn't the whole answer when you are recording 4k video the device does become very hot in fact Sony knows it when you enter into the 4k mode you are greeted by a nice dialogue which warns you if the device temperature rises the app may close during use your recording will be saved automatically and the warning dialog is Right once you start recording 4k the device temperature does start to rise and indeed if it does get too hot the app does close this isn't an immediate thing we aren't just talking about one minute of recording but if you record 4k video for around 20 minutes the device heats up significantly and the app will close according to my measurements the temperature of the back of the z5 compact can rate as much as by 20 degrees Celsius it's also worth pointing up the 4k recording eats into a battery life significantly this excessive heating unfortunately isn't just limited to 4k video if you record in HD video the said 5 compact also heats up by not quite as much but still by a significant 17 degrees centigrade in terms of general performance the Snapdragon 810 is an absolutely excellent processor the UI is always fast and responsive games play well normal productivity apps run well you never feel that you're wishing you had a better processor in the phone in fact for 3d games epochs it scored a rate of 50 8.5 frames per second in ultra high quality mode which is an absolutely excellent score and in terms of and two to the maximum I saw was sixty-two thousand one hundred and thirty now it's interesting having run the 4k video test which heats up the device a little bit the antutu score then dropped to fifty thousand nine hundred and fifty-five which is about eighty percent of what the maximum score is so let's move on to the camera with a twenty three megapixel Sony Exmor RS sensor a wide-angle twenty four millimeter lens and of course that option for 4k recording I was really looking forward to see what was it five compact camera could do however I must confess that I am a little disappointed part of my disappointment maybe because my expectations were too high this is a sory device Sony makes great digital cameras Sony sells its mobile sensors to lots of other smartphone makers this has a 23 megapixel so a sensor and so on basically I was expecting great things all I can say that the camera on those 85 did not meet my expectations now it doesn't mean it's a bad camera in fact it's quite a good camera but I wouldn't say it's the best now I'm going to show you a few pictures here that I've taken using the Zed 5 to show you what I mean if you want to see a full collection of photos that I've taken both in 23 megapixel mode and in 8 megapixel mode using super sampling please check out the review that is on the android authority website as you can see in good data at the camera works well and there is little to choose between the 23 megapixel mode and the 8 megapixel mode however some pictures are dull and washed out and in low-light situations the camera tries very hard to produce a good shot however the noise levels can be very high even for simple indoor shots with lots of internal lighting now the camera in those 85 compact is the same as the camera in the bigger z5 now for a deeper comparison you should also check out our camera shootout between the red 5 the LG g4 the galaxy note 5 and the iPhone 6s which you will find on the Android Authority website having said all that my disappointment about the cameras performance will slightly alleviated by the bundled camera app it truly is a great app and offers more than just the standard HDR and panorama along with a full manual mode there's lots of additional modes including in AR mode which can superimpose computer-generated scenes like dinosaurs and fish onto your photos or videos there's an AR mask mode to mask your face with different computer-generated masks a time shift movie mode which record at a high frame rate and applies slow motion effects and a multi-camera mode which allows you to record the same scene from multiple camera angles so let's move on to the software the z5 compact comes with android 5.1.1 lollipop by default and it will receive an upgrade to Android 6.0 marshmallow at some point in the future Sony has added a light skin on top of the stock Android experience and it also includes some extra features and Sony related apps as well as a software for managing the fingerprint reader there is a myriad of device connection options including the ability to wisely play content on your device to other Sony devices like a sony tv there's also screen mirroring and connecting to PlayStation controllers there's also a theme library with some free color based schemes and some paid schemes that you can pay for and download and these are based on movies like frozen cars Donald Duck Mad Max and so on under the power management section in the settings there are several different power saving modes available including stamina mode ultra stamina mode and low power mode there's also an estimate shown of how much battery life you've got left there were just 40% left the estimations showed that the phone would stay on standby for an extra three days which is quite impressive in terms of extra apps sony has included life log for tracking calories steps and sleep movie creator which makes movies from your photos in a similar way to Google photos track ID Sony's music recognition app wise pilot turn-by-turn navigation software and of course some dedicated PlayStation apps including PSN PlayStation and PS video one final thing worth mentioning on the software side is the inclusion of some small apps when you tap on the recent apps button there is a small toolbar with a selection of small apps like a calculator and timer and if you tap on little up arrow you'll be given other apps including a mini browser Gmail and the music app so what about the price the dead five compaq is available in the UK from a variety of carriers and outlets and costs around four hundred and twenty nine pound without a contract in Europe you can buy off contract directly from Sony for five hundred and ninety-nine euros there is no news yet of when the said five shoes will officially reach the USA however you can find it on amazon.com at the time of writing I found one seller who was selling it for five hundred and eighty dollars however the average seemed to be around $700 as our there we have it the said five compact now if you were going to buy this phone the decision really comes down to whether you want a phone that's smaller than five inches or not if you are looking for a sub five inch display then this could be the very phone for you you've got flagship specifications you've got the IP certification and you've got all the extra apps from Sony however don't forget it only has a 720p display the camera isn't as good as the hype will leave you to believe and if you record 4k video the device is going to overheat well my name's Gary simple and with authority I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please do give it a thumbs up also please tell me what you think about the Sony z5 compact in fact all of Sony's 85 series what you think about Sony phones in general please use the comments below to tell me all about that also up here you're going to see some links for subscribing to Android's youtube channel and also some links for social media for both me and for Android or authority and as for me I'm going to see you in my next video you