Sony has always been aggressive in its products. Generally speaking, other companies only release one flagship phone a year, while Sony releases one flagship phone every six months or more.
There was Xperia Z5 last autumn, and at the beginning of this year Xperia X as well as Xperia X Performance However, a few months later, another Sony flagship was introduced: Xperia XZ 。
Although Sony's flagship computers are updated more frequently, they haven't improved much, and Xperia XZ may be the one with the largest update range, adopting the new "Loop" The appearance design, sleek body and excellent hand feel, in addition, there is a screen size and battery configuration that are larger than X Performance, but the hardware parameters and system UI are still similar to the original.
In terms of hardware, Xperia XZ is still equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad core processor, but only has 3GB of memory. The basic model has 32GB of built-in memory, but it can be expanded through microSD card. Sony has upgraded the camera on Xperia XZ, equipped it with 23 million pixel sensor, 5-axis electronic anti shake and laser auto focusing, Then let's continue to see what surprises XZ has.
Parameter list:
Screen: 5.2 inch 1080P display
Body size: 146 x 72 x 8.1mm, weight: 161g
Battery capacity: 2900 mAh
Camera: main camera 23 million pixels; Front camera 13 million pixels
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad core processor, 3GB memory
Storage space: 32GB, supporting up to 256GB microSD card expansion
Durability: IP68 waterproof and dustproof certification
Design
Sony has always been famous for its beautiful design, and this Xperia XZ looks worthy of Sony's design.
At first glance, Xperia XZ still maintains its family appearance of DNA, sharp corners and relatively large body size, but now the transition of the frame is curved, making it more comfortable to hold in the hand. Sony calls it the "Loop" body design, and the back of the body uses a special aluminum alloy material, officially known as "Alkaleido", He also said that this time it was built in cooperation with Kobe Steel, one of the three largest steel plants in Japan X Performance The fuselage strength of is higher. It feels like a piece of shiny metal with a smooth coating on it, a bit like glass and shiny plastic. When the phone is clean, it looks really beautiful, but like all glossy materials, it is easy to get fingerprints and dirt.
When I picked up Xperia XZ and looked closely at it, I found that the frame of the phone was made of plastic, and there was also a piece of plastic at the bottom of the back of the phone. I believe that this is for better signal reception. All physical keys are concentrated on the right side of the body. The keys are also made of plastic. Neither press feedback nor feel is as good as Samsung's Galaxy phone or iPhone, The power key on the international version of Xperia XZ can also be used for fingerprint identification (the evaluation machine is the American version, and the fingerprint sensor has been canceled), and the recognition speed and accuracy are very high. I don't understand why the current flagship machine does not have fingerprint identification. It may be that its fingerprint identification patent conflicts in the United States and cannot be used.
The front is a beautiful display screen, which uses the fourth generation gorilla glass. The system is a virtual button. There are two speakers on the front of the fuselage, which is a good configuration. At the bottom of the fuselage is a USB Type-C interface for charging and data transmission. The 3.5mm headphone interface is located above the fuselage.
Xperia XZ has three colors to choose from, Tranquil Blue, Streamer Silver and Phantom Black. These three colors are very beautiful. This evaluator in our hand matches Tranquil Blue. The mobile phone has IP68 waterproof and dust-proof certification, and can operate for 30 minutes under the water depth of 1.5 meters at most. It can provide an additional protection for the mobile phone in the face of complex environments.
screen
This Sony Xperia XZ uses a 5.2 inch 1080P FHD display screen, IPS panel, and still has Sony's Triluminous, X-Reality image display technology. These terms that ordinary users don't understand may convince you that this is a good screen in marketing.
The 5.2 inch 1080P screen performs well in appearance. Although it is not a QHD resolution, I believe that most people still cannot see pixels. We have no complaints about this screen, but if you like playing with VR devices, the 1080P is not competent.
In terms of color, the over saturated color and cold color temperature of Xperia XZ are not good for photographers. They are difficult to find accurate colors, and they believe that users who prefer real colors will not be particularly impressed. For example, we do not particularly like this over bright color.
System UI
If you have used a Sony phone before, I believe you will not feel strange when you pick up the XZ. It is still the customized UI of Sony, based on Android 6.0 marshmallow. There are two points to say. First, Sony's UI is relatively simple and fresh, close to the native system, and has not made too many major changes; Secondly, since the release time of XZ is the same as Android 7.0 nougat, we are not very satisfied that it still runs the old system.
Let's first see what is new in the system. Sony has built an application cache cleaner. Unlike similar apps, Sony's cache cleaner is completely automated, and you don't need to do anything. This is very convenient.
The Sony system is relatively clean and beautiful. The color of the system theme matches the color of the body very nicely. The design of the entire system UI is quite different from that of Samsung TouchWiz, which gives a fresh feeling.
performance
Most of this year's flagship mobile phones are equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processors, and Xperia XZ is no exception, but it is special that it is only equipped with 3GB of memory. In general, we don't complain much about this configuration, but we have noticed the occasional stuttering in the use process, and also stuttering when switching apps. It seems that Sony is not doing very well in system optimization, and such stuttering should not appear on high-end flagship phones. The XZ's GPU is also the Adreno 530, which is one of the most powerful GPUs on mobile phones at present. There is no need to worry too much about games.
See a set of performance tests
（AnTuTu）
（Vellamo Metal）
（Vellamo Browser）
（JetStream）
（GFXBench T-Rex HD on）
（GFXBench Manhattan）
（Basemark OS II）
(Geekbench 4 single core)
(Geekbench 4 multi-core)
32GB of built-in storage space supports microSD card expansion, but it is particularly puzzling that such a "light" system UI occupies 12GB of storage space, and the remaining space from the factory is only 20GB, which is a bit inconceivable. However, in view of the same situation with other Xperia devices, we are not surprised.
camera
The main camera of Xperia XZ uses a Sony IMX300 sensor, 1/2.3 inch, which is the largest sensor size we have ever seen in mobile phones. In addition, it is also equipped with a Sony G lens, The combination of f/2.0 aperture and 6 lenses can theoretically produce better and more beautiful pictures. By the way, the front camera of Xperia XZ is 13 million pixels.
Sony also equipped it with laser auto focusing to help achieve faster focusing speed, and an RGBC-IR sensor to improve the accuracy of white balance.
The functions of Sony Camera App are enough for another article. It is difficult to summarize all aspects of it in the evaluation. However, cameras also have some shortcomings. First, the processing speed. We compared a series of mobile phones, from the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy to the much cheaper ones One plus mobile phone However, only this Xperia XZ of Sony has a loading ring that rotates for a while after each time the shutter is pressed to take a picture. In addition, the camera's UI interface is also slightly awkward. Slide on the interface to switch between photo and video modes, and the switching process will take several seconds to complete.
The main camera of Xperia XZ is 23 million pixels, but it is 8 million pixels in the default Super Auto mode. You can adjust it by yourself: 23 million pixels (4:3), 20 million pixels (16:9) and 8 million pixels (16:9). After several comparisons, we recommend that you use the 8 million pixel mode to take photos, because it has slightly better tolerance and clarity.
(Camera UI)
The manual mode is also not absent. You can freely adjust the shutter speed, exposure, white balance and manual focusing. There are also a variety of photographic scenes to choose from. There are 17 kinds of scenes, such as night view mode, motion mode, file shooting, pet mode, etc. Many people may feel dizzy. In Superior Auto mode, the camera will automatically help you choose a scene, You don't need to bother yourself, but the camera's function logic is a bit strange. If you want to turn HDR on or off, you must first enter the menu, then turn it on or off, and then close the menu to continue shooting. There are too many unnecessary operations.
Photo quality
The quality of the photos taken by Xperia XZ can only be said to be "OK", not very good, or even can't be compared with iPhone 7 Samsung Galaxy S7 、 LG G5 When compared with the mobile phones, the photos taken by Sony's mobile phones before are all of the more realistic colors, but this XZ has some small changes. The samples taken by XZ can obviously feel that there is oversaturation and over sharpening, and the details are blurred.
But in terms of focusing, Xperia XZ The performance is excellent, focusing speed is fast and accurate, and Sony is also proud of its auto focusing function. Its working principle is as follows: when shooting, click the object you want to focus on in the viewfinder, and then the focus will always follow him. It is fully automated, and is not often easy to use, but its use scenarios are limited, so it can't focus on some small objects, And because XZ uses a wide-angle lens, unless you zoom in, many objects will appear too small under the XZ lens.
XZ is equipped with a single LED flash light, which is still very bright. However, in use, it will add a layer of cold and green color to the picture, which will destroy the whole picture. We don't want to use this flash light at all.
We are quite satisfied with the front camera, but like the main camera, it is not very excellent, but it can take good self portraits in good light conditions, both in detail and clarity. It is a higher level than the front camera on the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s, but in indoor and low light environments, The photos will be a little blurry.
Let's take a look at a group of samples
video recording
When Xperia XZ shoots a 30fps 4K video, the image stabilization function is turned off by default. The captured video will have a jelly effect, and the appearance is very ordinary. So remember to enter the setting to turn on the stabilization function. One interesting thing is that, XZ is the first mobile phone that supports H.265 encoding in video recording. However, the phone defaults to H.264 encoding, so you still need to change the settings. The video capacity recorded by H.265 encoding is much smaller. For example, one minute of H.264 encoding 4K video is about 397MB. For the same scenario, the H.265 encoding is only 256MB, a full 36% smaller.
Do you think H.265 coding is awesome? In fact, this is not the case. Large video websites like YouTube do not support this encoding.
Xperia XZ is a bit strange. You can only record 1080P videos without unlocking your phone. If you want to record 4K videos, you must unlock your phone first. It seems that the operation is a bit anti human. To view Xperia XZ 4K video recording, please . (Wall climbing required:- D）
Battery life
Sony Xperia XZ is equipped with a non removable 2900 mAh battery. Sony said that they have adopted some methods to make the mobile phone battery free from the impact of charging, so that the battery can have a longer life.
Now let's put the XZ together with other mobile phones to carry out a endurance test we made: first, adjust the screen brightness to 200 nits, and test according to the daily use of mobile phones to see how long it can last without turning off the screen.
(In the endurance test, Xperia XZ scored 6 hours and 41 minutes)
First of all, don't expect too much. The 2900 mAh battery performs well, but not very well. The test result is 6 hours and 41 minutes, which is about the same level as the Galaxy S7 of Snapdragon 820. The XZ score is stronger than the LG G5 and Nexus 5X, but much weaker than the iPhone 6s.
In terms of charging time, how long does it take for Xperia XZ to charge from 0% to 100%? Here we use the charger of the mobile phone to test.
The power of the XZ charging head is 5V 1.5A (7.5 watts). From the charging time, this is definitely not a fast charging head. We are surprised to see such a slow charging efficiency in today's mobile phones. It took us 2 hours and 54 minutes to fully charge! Such achievements are hard to show up.
However, Sony said that too slow charging efficiency can bring some benefits. There is a smart charging option in Xperia XZ. Charging with a mobile phone for a long time will have a bad impact on the battery. If you plug your mobile phone into bed every night, XZ can learn about your daily waking time. For example, if you get up at 8:00 every morning, XZ will stop charging at 90%, and then automatically resume charging when you are about to get up, so that when you get up, your phone is fully charged, and it will not cause too much impact on the battery.
summary
To be honest, we have some doubts about the price of Sony Xperia XZ. The price in the United States is as high as 700 dollars (about 4739 yuan). We hope that its price can be reduced in the future. After all, this price is much less competitive than the Samsung Galaxy S7 (100 dollars cheaper than XZ), And S7 edge and iPhone 7 are better choices.
Xperia XZ still has some very good advantages, beautiful appearance and simple design, IP68 waterproof and dustproof, two good front speakers and so on are very attractive, but it is inevitable that there are also shortcomings, such as the display of general screen quality, sometimes stuck, mediocre camera, and the system occupies too much storage space. What's worse, fingerprint recognition is not supported in the United States.
Bonus points
√ Beautiful appearance
√ Waterproof
√ Dual speakers
√ Can expand storage space
Negative equinox
× Camera interface is difficult to use
* The color of the display screen is not accurate
× The mobile phone released at this point is actually Android 6.0
Translation of pictures and texts from:
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