#SONY #XPERIA #XZ2 #TECH - techbuzzireland.com

The 5.7-inch Xperia XZ2 is a Sony flagship smartphone in liquid black. The Aluminium frame looks good with a curved back, smooth to touch with rounded edges packing a good camera. This phone is designed to take a knock or 2 been able to withstand IP rated as “dust tight” and protected against powerful jets of water been water resistant.

The Corning Gorilla Glass 5, gives good protection against drops, surviving 1.6-meter, shoulder-height drops onto hard, rough surfaces up to 80% of the time. The phone comes with a large sealed battery and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform3 for increased speed.

The Qnovo Adaptive Charging monitors your battery’s health when it’s plugged in and adjusts current levels to ensure the battery isn’t overworked. The battery care charges the phone to 90%, waits, then charges to 100% just before your wake-up time.

3D Creator:

This is a great app on the phone, which take a few minutes to understand and review. This is a software that lets you create three-dimensional captures of objects. This allows selfie, face, food and head scan, and free form (the tutorial must be read before you can use).

The result of the 3D Creator gives a professional looking video in minutes which could only be dreamed of in a Spielberg movie, (possible the Sony experience at work here). There is an option for 3D printing which is exhilarating to view. This is a WOW feature!

Annoyance – There are very few features on this smartphone that I can criticize or dislike while (minor gripes) the liquid black Aluminium frame leaves fingerprints over the phone but it is trend. The shiny smooth texture could tend to slide off a smooth table as no grip on the smart phone and if using the device with no case as in our case it will rock if you are trying to text etc, The smartphone is a bit chubby, and rocks which I would not have expected. There is no 3.5mm audio jack which is a trend following in Apple and others footsteps. The Software trend in accepting the T&C repeatedly with apps requiring access to non-relevant features is annoying.

https://youtu.be/R6P4UsvziJA

Conclusion:

The smartphone is a Sony flagship phone with all the featured expected from Sony, the 19MP Motion Eye camera, Front Camera: 5MP Video Recording: 4K video recording camera. The experience of Sony on the audio, loud clear stereo speaker system. This has a great battery life with software featured to enhance battery life and performance. This was far longer than many other phones used in the past. The unit comes with a 64gb Universal Flash Storage but can be expanded to up to 400GB with a micro SD.

This was tried with a 64GB SD card which worked as any card, which I believe would be the same as the 400GB SD card (SD card in the range of €180) The speed of the phone was impressive with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Processor, while the 4GB RAM seems low for their flagship phone with many other phones having 6 GB ram. The option of a dual sim phone is great option allowing a work sim and personal sim to be used simultaneously, (many of the networks may restrict this). The Sony PS4 has links to the Xperia XZ2 allowing features to be enhanced. The build quality as expected from Sony is great, water resistance, and has good protection against drops.

Sony has here also listened to its fans a taken that boxy look away which lasted several generations of their devices this rounded look is nice be it a tad on the bulky side but it fits well in the hand and stands out, Black would not be my first choice if I was to buy one howevera case make all the difference.

SONY XPERIAXZ2 LAUNCH WITH COMMENTRY

Overall the Xperia XZ2 will not disappoint from the Sony range.

https://www.sonymobile.com/ie

Also see our guest review by LiamBurke

Additional text and images by Jim

Sony has changed its design in the new Xperia XZ2 family to what they call “Ambient flow” instead of the “Loop Surface” design from previous Xperia’s like the XZ1 Series. I liked the old design but the new design gives the phone a more curved rear surface allowing it to fit in your hand more naturally. I did find the phone slippy so its worth getting a case for the phone.
It feels very premium and solid with the metal frame and Corning Gorilla Glass5 making it look very sleek. It took me around a day to get used to the placement of the rear fingerprint scanner as on the previous Xperia’s it was on the side of the phone. Its great Sony has kept the dedicated camera button as it has on other Xperia’s, on the side is the power button and volume rocker, which were both easily used when the phone is in your hand.

I didn’t think that the phone would fit so well in the hand as it does as it weights 198g and its thickness 11.1mm but it feels comfortable in the hand. On the top of the phone is a microphone and a tray for the Nano Sim Card and Micro SD, its handy that no pin is needed to remove the tray, there is also a LED for notifications above the screen.
At the bottom is another microphone and the USB-C port as there is no headphone jack Sony have bundled and USB-C headphone adapter in the box. The Xperia XZ2 is rated for IP65/68 so its water-resistant and dust-proof, so no need to worry about getting it wet in the odd shower of rain we get in Ireland.

SCREEN
The Xperia XZ2 has a Full HD+ 1080p IPS LCD HDR screen with a 18:9 aspect ratio and increased its screen size to 5.7 inches from the previous Xperia XZ1 so that 13% larger (2160 x 1080 pixels which gives a pixel density of 424 ppi), you can watch HDR video content from YouTube.
Again Sony bring their Bravia Television technology to their Xperia devices to improve the screens display with TRILUMINOS and X-Reality features as well as being able to convert non-HDR content to near HDR.
The screen gave quiet good viewing angles and even in direct sunlight the screen was viewable without any problems, theres plenty of options in the Display settings like White balance and Colour gamut and contrast allowing you to tweak the display to the way you like. Sony had also added a neat feature called Night Light which cuts down on blue light so it should make it easier to fall asleep at night.
AUDIO
Sony brings plenty of their audio tech to the Xperia XZ2 like DSEE HX, LDAC Hi-Res Audio, ClearAudio+ and S-Force Front Surround Sound. It also has something Sony call Dynamic Vibration System which gives the Xperia XZ2 a rumble feedback like you would find in a PlayStation controller when there is audio playing either in music or watching movies or games. I found the feature most useful when playing games as it adds to the overall gameplay.
As I mentioned above Sony have followed other phone makes and have removed the headphone jack so you will need to use the included adapter if using wired headphones, it’s a pity the Xperia XZ2 doesn’t support wired digital noise cancelling headphones like the MDR-NC31EM or MDR-NC750. The Xperia XZ2 Stereo speakers which Sony say are 20% louder compared to the Xperia XZ1 and the Stereo Speakers are definitely a step up in loudness.

CAMERA
The Xperia XZ1 and XZ2 have a 19Mp Motion Eye single-lens cameras, but Sony has made some enhancements in the Xperia XZ2 with its new image signal processor which Sony developed with Qualcomm. The rear camera is 25 mm wide with Sony G Lens F2.0 with laser aufofocus. Like all Xperia’s when you open the camera app its default mode is the Superior Auto mode which tries to automatically recognize the scene the camera is looking at and apply the correct settings for it.
There is a manual mode when you can change settings like ISO, White Balance, Exposure, Shutter Speed and Auto Focus. I found the Auto mode quite good at quickly selecting the correct scene when opening the camera app and taking good quality photos, it gave good color reproduction and keeps the images sharp in the situations that I used the camera.
The Camera apps section where you can have AR effects in your photos, or ‘Bokeh’ app which puts the subject in focus and background out of focus.
For videos there are plenty of options on how you want to record your videos, like color and brightness, Video resolution, Object tracking and Steadyshot. I found Steadyshot very good at keeping the video smooth even when your moving.

The Xperia XZ2 can record in 4K HDR, the videos recorded with these settings did keep a lot of detail and color compared to videos recorded in HD. The Xperia XZ2 supports Full HD slow motion video recording at 960fps, in practice I found it a bit tricky to get slow motion videos, as it does take a bit of practice. Xperia XZ2 Slow Motion

BATTERY
The Xperia XZ2 made some improvements in the battery department increasing its capacity to 3180mAh (compared to 2700 mAh in the Xperia XZ1). The Xperia XZ2 also supports Qi Wireless charging (Qi Mid 9w) as well as Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0.
As we keep our smartphones for longer now Sony have a feature called Battery Care which learns you charging routine and instead of charging the phone quickly it slow charges the phone which increases the lifespan of the phones battery. I was getting 2 days of usage from a full charge with “Stamina mode” enabled.
PERFORMANCE
The Xperia XZ2 runs Android Oreo 8.0 out of the box, while I used the phone it was very smooth as its running Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 845 with 4GB of RAM and 64 internal storage. I had no issues when switching between different apps. Sony has a light skin on Android so they should be quick enough to release patches as they are following Googles A/B (Seamless) System Updates. Bluetooth 5.0 is supported.
They also have carried on their 3D creator app from the Xperia XZ1 which allows you to create 3D scans and make avatars from them it’s a pretty nifty app. Aligning with the PlayStation brand the Xperia XZ2 allows PS4 Remote Play so you can connect to your PS4 in your home, you also get a 12 month free PlayStation plus subscription included with the Xperia XZ2 which is a nice extra.
Full Specs – https://www.sonymobile.com/ie/products/phones/xperia-xz2/
Available to buy:- From Vodafone :- from Free on Billpay http://shop.vodafone.ie/shop/phones/sony-xperia-xz2-bill-pay-black And on Prepay 649€ http://shop.vodafone.ie/shop/phones/sony-xperia-xz2-pay-as-you-go-black
From Eir :- from 149€ on billpay https://www.eir.ie/store/mobile/phones/bill-pay/sony-xperia-xz2/