Well Sony keeps growing and growing the Z lineup. It started with the original Sony Xperia Z announced back at the start of 2013, that phone really put Sony on our radars. With a 5 inch 1080p screen and Sony's very stylish take on Android, not to mention how it was water resistant. That only continued with the Z1, released in September 2013, it brought some bumped up specs and was a pretty good phone as well. But upgrade and most of all: if it deserves a place in your pocket.we thought it was released too soon, it was almost Sony saying that it didn't trust the Z as their flagship for the year the way most companies do. So now we find ourselves in April, we know the Z2 will be released sometime this month. So let’s dig in and see if this phone is worth the
At MWC in February Sony revealed the Xperia Z2. We were impressed and we know that this phone will be released sometime in April. But let’s start with the thing you look at and feel every single day: build quality. The Z2 brings a stylish glass design. It looks very “presidential” and at 163g it feels great in the hand but as much as it does feel good, we didn't want to drop it for fear of it breaking, so you might want to consider a case. The Z2 is definitely the biggest Android competitor to the HTC One M8 in the build department. It brings a nice 5.2inch IPS display with a 1080p resolution and a pixel density of 424ppi. Colors look great and very eye opening. Sony included a 20.7 mega pixel camera on the back. There are all the picture taking features in the world on it including 4K video, weather you use them or not, pictures will look great and clear, white balances are good and its low light performances worked great with all the mega pixels in its favour. Sony is very proud about the fact that the Z2 is water resistant and it is very reassuring to know that some rain or water won't hurt your phone. But be warned, water resistant and waterproof are two entirely different things so we don't recommend going deep sea diving with this phone.
Sony put the best of the best in its guts. Right off the bat we get an Adreno 330 GPU, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 clocked in at 2.3GHZ and 3GB of Ram, geek talk for fast and snappy. Also we get a MicroSD card slot for memory expansion which is great. Sony brings onboard the phone Android 4.4.2 KitKat with Sony’s flavour of interface. Honestly Sony’s UI is fast and snappy, it’s not too toy like but at the same time not too boring. It’s a good mixture of colors and fonts, just like the build quality it’s fit for a king. The most important thing though: it doesn’t slow down the phone.
So how does it perform? Like a boss! It honestly is a contender for the top 5 phones of 2014 and we’re not even halfway through the year yet. Boot-up times are great; it’s fast between launching and closing apps and it’s nice to see useful features like Smallapps and Sony’s media apps returning. This phone is as fast as any flagship of 2014 but there were a few studders here and there, nothing major but for such a fast processor it shouldn’t be happening. The non removable 3200mAh battery will get you through the day no worries what so ever and in the unlikely event it does, well Sony has built in a bunch of battery saving features.
But unfortunately it’s not perfect. Like we mentioned in the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact review; the flaps are annoying. Like seriously in 2014 we should not have to open flap just to charge a phone and it just looks plain ugly when all of the flaps are open. The speakers aren’t great there okay, definitely not the best on a phone. But that’s just little things there aren’t many things to complain about which is always a promising thing.
So should you buy this phone? Well if you’re in the market for a Sony phone then yes, this is Sony’s best. If you have a Z1 you don’t need to upgrade, the Z1 is basically the same phone. This phone is a great phone and we have no complaints, but something just makes it feel “same old same old”. It’s not a breakthrough phone, but Sony’s okay with that. They like taking things in small steps and releasing flagships in a very short period of time and that’s not always a bad thing. I give this phone an 8.4/10. Because at the end of the day it is a great phone and definitely a welcomed companion for your pocket for the next two years.
By: Ben Smith