Gadgetory

what's up everyone John retina from TechnoBuffalo here at the full review for you of Sony's latest flagship this is the Xperia Z it was one of my favorite phones of CES 2013 and ran away with one of our best and show awards let's see I would translate it from concept to production see if it deserves a spot in your pocket for the next few years alright so before we get to the full review let me remind you what the Xperia Z is Rock and there is a lot under the hood here you are looking at a 5-inch 1080p display it means got a resolution of sates yourself real fast 1920 by 1080 giving it 8 441 PPI it's running Android 4.1 at launch but Sony is hopeful that they will get 4.2 on it 1.5 gigahertz Qualcomm Snapdragon quad-core 2 gigs a ram 16 gigs of storage but you can up that with a microSD card on the backs got a 13 megapixel camera 2 megapixel on front Bluetooth 4.0 802 11 B gene and and a 2330 milliamp hour battery alright so before we get into the floor view the phone let's get this one out of the way call quality if it's not gonna make good phone calls it's not really gonna be that useful for you call coat is actually very good this is an OEM unlocked version does not have compatibility for AT&T LTE network Allah we did test it on AT&T call qualities were great speaker volume was pretty loud no one had any issues with hearing us and then our xx call drop test we did not have any so thumbs up to Sony for that so this phone is a kind of a mixed bag for me and really high hopes after seeing it yes I love the way the phone felt I love the waterproofing ness of it which I'll talk about at length and the phone looked like it was exactly what Sony needed to really make inroads in the United States market so I've been breaking reviews down previously into what I like on when I don't like this one though I'm just gonna talk about the features of the phone and we're going to go with the flow alright so let's start big time here with the screen since I promote you're gonna look at whenever you're doing anything with this guy so you'd expect it to have a beautiful screen 1080p learnt that many phones out there that 1080p yet looks good but it's not as amazing as a 1080p screen should look especially when you compare it to the HTC One the Droid DNA as we're gonna see throughout the whole review this is a huge case of form over function the bones essentially waterproof to reasonable amount I wouldn't take it scuba diving but if you're out in the rain you drop it in toilet I drop it in a puddle you are going to be fine but because of that the screen has to be sealed encoded which kind of makes it look like it's got a bad screen protector on it you can tell there's a good screen underneath just waiting to get out and I really wish that we could have seen that that beautiful screens look like Sony is really known for beautiful display technologies I just don't feel like that's being shown here with the Xperia Z one other issue that I've got with the phone it's got a beautiful 5 inch screen but a lot of it taken up with these on-screen buttons which is kind of annoying now it's nice that the on screen buttons can change contexture depending on what app you're in but if we're using one of the more common apps least for me the browser you can really see a difference with how much content is shown so if I bring in the HTC one's actually has a smaller screen this is a 4.7 inch screen versus a 5 inch screen on the Xperia Z you can see that I can see more content here on the one I can see that third article down below which I just can't do here on the Z and you see that they're both at the top of the page you can't scroll up any higher it's all the cons that I really want to see on the experience you can't see because that real estate is being taken up there's a huge bezel here down below which looks like it'd be a great place to put actual buttons so I would have really liked to obscure seeing that view angles here aren't that great as well I think that's another case because the coating on the screen so we're looking at it from a slight angle you have a really hard time seeing it and almost impossible to see in direct sunlight it's actually one of the worst phones I've seen in direct sunlight we're not seen I should say and that again is more than likely due to that screen coating on it that makes this phone waterproof so something I do like about the phone I really sort of digged the design like a giant slab in your hand that huge power button lives right here on the right hand side at first I found that a bit of an odd design q but I found myself really getting used to it I loved the fact that it was big and pronounced I can actually find it very easily having the volume rocker up and down below it was certainly something new but muscle memory after a few days made it pretty easy to keep up with all the ports on this phone are covered because it is waterproof which is nice if you're out in the rain but can definitely make it annoying if you want to plug in a headset you want to charge your phone and do anything that would involve a peripheral port on here definitely something to keep in mind so a lot of people are asking why would you want a waterproof phone we found the obvious ones of dropping the toilet or a puddle if you take a phone out in the rain especially a foam that's got a 3.5 millimeter headset jack on the top if a water droplet should get in there oftentimes there is a moisture sensor and if you take the phone in to get warranty serviced it will be triggered to show that there is water damage to the phone so that's one thing at least to consider the camera is another big story here and the camera was really solid especially in low light so knees got their Bravia Engine 2 in here which just absolutely helps tremendously with not only viewing images taking images and processing anything has to do with Stills and video the camera quality was really good again especially in low light if you want to get a better sense the camera looks like we did a full post comparing the HTC one's an ultra pixel camera with a variety of others including the Xperia Z's you can see a full example what this looks like this is definitely one of the best a smartphone camera that I've tested our performance is really quick as you expect from a quad core even though most software can't yet take advantage of quad core it was a pretty quick phone Quadron scores seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-three which is pretty solid scoring that's not the go-to tests for all phone scores but it's consistent I use it in all of my phones and that's one of the highest ones that I've seen things here are pretty fast everything expect to work works playing games browse the Internet no matter what you're doing everything here just works quick and as you expect there's really no lag at all especially during scrolling which sometimes you can see on Android devices so sony has gotten rid of not only the Ericsson moniker but their time scape and Mediascape UI that we've seen today on top of Android I really like what they've done here it's very soft they have an overly skinned things they have a lot of ways to let Android be Android a few interesting things though there go ahead and do a little pinch action there you can see the way you access to widgets apps wallpapers or themes it's what you sort of customize the way the phone looks a little bit it doesn't do all that much for you essentially it just changes background and lock screen I would have liked to have seen a screen it gives me more information on the lock screen but certainly a third-party app can take care of that if we go ahead and go back take a look at some the widgets that are here and Sony's got some really nice ones some weather widgets which are really handy and all the stock of Google that you see but a lot of ways Sony really didn't do that much here with Android whenever they did do a couple tweaks I was in the app tray here so you can see what things look like you can view them any way you choose own order alphabetical most use or recently installed for alphabetical makes it easier to uh to find things I will go ahead and go back home one other cool UI quark that we've got here if you go in hit the multitasking button you can put little widgets on top of the screen so if I select calculator drag that there on go ahead and do my calculation right on it when I'm done just get rid of it it's very neat that Sony has done that there are a few options here for things you can choose from so what's the verdict here on the Xperia Z this is a phone that exists in a world with a lot of other phones out there and it's got to be a compelling reason to pick this one up as of this filming it has not been announced by us care meaning you've got to shell out full retail price for the phone I've got a very hard time recommending it there's nothing wrong with the phone nothing particularly great or outstanding about it either in a world of HTC ones and Galaxy phones and droid DNA is this is gonna be a really hard sell for me if I'm someone that wants to take my phone snorkelling this would be one reason considered if I live in a rainy climate I can't save water damage yeah it's gonna make a lot of sense but there's nothing that this phone really excels in that would make me purchase this over any other competitors on the market this phone gets a 7.5 on the TechnoBuffalo scale we're thinking is exactly where it belongs it works well there's no faults with it it's just not great the screen I would have liked have been a bit better if they release a non waterproof version of this and I know they've got the Xperia Z L doesn't have the same screen size that we've got here I would absolutely love in it perhaps my opinions would change but we're looking here at the Xperia Z I just don't think I can justify it for the money so what do you guys think do you agree disagree with my opinion on the Xperia Z I would love to hear your thoughts leave your comments down below please give this video a thumbs up we definitely appreciate it I'm sure to check us out at TechnoBuffalo com4 latest greatest tech news I'm John Rhett enger' I'll see you next video you