Gadgetory

manufacturers continue to blur the lines between small tablets and large smartphones and the latest manufactured of push that boundary is Sony its latest smartphone has stretched our hands and pockets for more than a week now I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is our full review of the Sony Xperia Z ultra but before we get to that we'd like to give a shout out to our friends at Negri electronics for lending us a Z ultra for this review check out their site for a Z ultra of your own other mobile devices or mobile accessories externally the Xperia Z ultra takes many design cues from its nearest relatives the Xperia Z and Xperia tablet Z it features practically the same design an all-glass front and back with high quality matte finished trim along the edges and like those two siblings Z ultra comes with ip55 and ip57 z' meaning it can withstand up to one liter of water submersion for up to 30 minutes but there are two aspects of the Z ultra which are impossible to miss how extremely thin the device is and its massive footprint measures a hundred and seventy nine point four millimeters tall and ninety two point two millimeters wide more like a tablet than a smartphone it also hits the scales at 212 grams yet it only measures six point five millimeters thick it's large stature is most obviously due to its enormous display diagonally the Xperia Z ultra display is six point four inches at a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels it offers a respectable density of 344 pixels per inch and like the Xperia Z devices before the Z ultra display appears slightly washed out beside displays like the HTC One S s LCD three display or AMOLED panels it doesn't offer very deep blacks and while its viewing angles are wider than we remember with the smaller Xperia Z we're not blown away by the Xperia Z ultra display however the Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 certainly helps in video playback involve ughing pictures one unique feature worth mentioning is the ability to use any old pen or pencil with the seal for as a makeshift stylus for us and all the times we've tried it it's been hit or miss and it lacks the level of integration Samsung's S Pen offers it's unfortunately no more useful than a standard capacitive stylus other than that the Z ultra puts up something oppressive specifications it ships with the Snapdragon 800 chipset which is composed of a 2.2 gigahertz quad-core Krait 400 CPU and Adreno 330 GPU it has 2 gigabytes of RAM and 16 gigabytes of fixed storage but the storage is expandable by way of microSD card the camera sensor around back is rated at 8 megapixels while the front camera is 2 megapixels and the battery is rated at 3050 million powers if you've seen our videos on any of the recent experiences you know exactly what to expect with the Z ultra software quite literally nothing has changed this is Android version 4.2.2 beneath Sony's customized skin comes with a set of eight themes to choose from a set of Sony's widgets and its own custom icons it also has a handful of pre installed applications the most noteworthy customization is the set of quick setting toggles at the top of notification shade which are user definable of course the small apps are still accessible by pressing the recent apps button more are available in the Play Store and there is a usual power management software in the settings application stamina mode which can easily double or triple your standby time depending on your usage finally under the Xperia connectivity submenu in settings sony has included some throw settings for playing wireless content on connected displays as well as support for DualShock 3 wireless controllers perfect for gamers performance is unquestionably the highest point of the Xperia Z ultra Snapdragon 800 chip is easily one of the most powerful chipsets we've ever put our hands on second only to the Tegra 4 it's used synthetic benchmarks up and spits them out without even thinking about breaking a sweat the Z ultra makes light work of intense gaming and multitasking and it has no problems putting up the numbers where it counts it performs extremely smoothly for the diehards and performance junkies this device is a dream come true but we must note that after several hard resets were still experiencing issues with a touchscreen it's insensitive at times not even picking up taps and swipes other times it's entirely too sensitive or poorly calibrated accepting swipes as taps and vice-versa we can neither confirm that this is a common issue nor that we've received a defective unit it doesn't seem to be a common problem but we have found more than one other user with a similar problem the speaker on this device is plainly put we it's quiet tinny and entirely too easy to cover up we suggest sticking with headphones when possible and it's also worth noting that stamina especially in heavy usage is nothing worth writing home about we were able to manage a full day of charge on the device but only by leaving it at our pockets most of the day and use the battery jobs rather quickly on the Z ultra the upshot stamina mode does its job exceptionally well and the Z ultra charges extra quick also thanks to the Snapdragon 800 the call quality on the Z ultra is par for the course the earpiece speaker is nice and the collars on the other end noted that we sounded crisp and very clear speakerphone quality was as expected not that great the volume was simply too low and color sounded robotic at times and data speeds test channel both t-mobile and AT&T HSPA+ networks in the Charlotte metro and winston-salem areas of North Carolina were moderate but nothing terribly impressive about 5 megabits per second down and 1 to 2 megabits per second up and the camera quality at 8 megapixels with no LED flash is once again modest it takes fairly crisp photos with bright colors but it often erred on the side of way to cool giving many photos a dead field without some post-processing or manual white balance adjustment it does however come with a lot of settings and shooting modes to toggle and choose between and we must note it calms set to 5 megapixels out of the box for a 16:9 aspect ratio images are on par with other 8 megapixel cameras but they're nothing mind-blowing so what do we make of all this it's quite simple actually the Xperia Z ultra is not a phone for everyone in fact it's only practical for a very small subset of people who fill a smartphone is simply not enough it's for the user who feels a small tablet is more usable and geared towards the performance they need out of a pocket-sized device our problem with the Z ultra is that for the best majority of people who might consider a 6 point 4 inch device it's simply too big there's an unusual amount of bezel at the top at bottom of the display which we imagine is due to it being so thin instead if you approach this device as a small tablet like a Nexus 7 with an earpiece instead of a giant Xperia Z you will see this device in a much more favorable light and if it weren't for the inconsistent touchscreen we probably would have enjoyed the smartphone a whole heck of a lot more it's basically unadulterated power and it feels untamed unfinished we give the Xperia Z ultra seven point five out of ten and for one final time we would like to thank our friends at Negri electronics for lending us this Xperia Z ultra for review check out their site and tell them PocketNow sent you that's gonna wrap this video up if you enjoyed it be sure to click the thumbs up button below and subscribe to see more videos like this one in the future and let us know how you felt about the video in the comments below follow us on all the usual channels twitter google+ and facebook at pocket now you can find me on twitter at casper tech i'm taylor martin and i will see you next time