#sony #xperia #xz3 #tech #review - techbuzzireland.com

The Sony Xperia XZ3 came in a standard box with no case and some accessories, Other manufacturers take note when it comes to dongles! The phone is longer than most phones used but not as wide as many allowing single hand texting. The buttons are located on the right edge allowing again one hand use. The square edges design and sharp corners as seen on the older XZ1 has gone.. Finally!

The Sony Xperia XZ3 looks more like an S8 in term of feel but longer & wider. Both are unclear which is the top or bottom of the phone without pressing a button. The Xperia XZ3 is dust-proof and protected from water damage, can be (in theory) full immersed in 1.5 meters for water for up to 30 minutes). IP65/68 water-resistant design& Corning Gorilla Glass 5. The screen is OLED covered in Gorilla Glass 5, with aluminium chassis, the phone came with no propriety pin to access the sim card, instead allowing a thumb or finger, to open the flap located at the bottom left of the phone to reveal the SIM card slot. Jim gives a first impression here in the unboxing below.

Highlight Specification

6.0” HDR OLED display with X-Reality™ for mobile (QHD+)
Sony’s Dynamic Vibration System for immersive entertainment
19 MP Motion Eye™ camera with Smart launch
Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 845 Mobile Platform
IP65/68 water-resistant design⁴ & Corning® Gorilla® Glass 5

The phone came with great Camera apps, e.g. 3D Creator, the 3D Creator allows high-resolution 3D scanning, creating 3D models of physical objects in a matter of seconds. This is a great feature of this phone which was previously discussed on

https://techbuzzireland.com/2018/06/06/review-sony-xperia-xz2-sony-xperia/

The camera had other impressive features e.g. Bokeh which allows you focus on an object on the screen and allows you to blur out the backroad images, this was impressive for Instagram photos. The 19MP Motion Eye camera software developed over years on Sony camera allowed the camera to make decisions on the image and utilise 4K HDR Movie recording or film 960fps Super slow motion in Full HD resolution.

Applications:

3D Creator
Music
Album for photo & video
Movie Creator
AR effect
Xperia Lounge

The phone has an abundant of Apps pre-installed on the phone, Sketch – Draw & Paint comes pre-installed on the phone and worked absolutely, touching the screen to draw/quality gave a great quality, lines were clear and easily use. It’s good to see AVG antivirus pre-installed on the phone, ensuring security is paramount, these apps can be got from the playstore but good to see pre-installed. The Sony Xperia XZ3 can be used as a Remote for the Playstation. The pop out app screen was annoying until you got familiar to the pop-out screen.

SONY IRELAND CHRISTMAS TECH

Display Screen:

6.0”, 18:9 OLED QHD+ (2880 x 1440) HDR display 5
TRILUMINOS™ Display for mobile
X-Reality™ for mobile
Dynamic Contrast Enhancer
HDR up-conversion

The screen is OLED which was immense, watching video on YouTube or Netflix shows a remarkable difference as compared to other phones. The colour and details stood out. Sony vast experience in the area showing its high-contrast, colour and detail of High Dynamic Range (HDR) was superior. The definition on the screen can be so good that on some videos its shows the limitation of a poor-quality video, is like have an old camera phone photo displayed on a 46’’TV you can see the limitations, this was notices on older videos. Some videos were compared with an iPhone, Samsung phone and this Sony product. Sony quality was noticeably different on the screen.

Audio:

Sound as expected from Sony was excellent with a bonus connector in the box allowing the use of the USB Type-C™ to 3.5mm Audio Jack Adapter. The audio seemed realistic with the use of an internal speaker, the Sound was loud and clear, the specification was of high-end. To top it of the dynamic vibration is an extra treat and this should be a standard.

High-Resolution Audio (LPCM, FLAC, ALAC, DSD)

DSEE HX™
LDAC
ClearAudio+
Stereo speaker with S-Force Front Surround
Stereo Recording
Qualcomm^® aptX^™ HD audio¹¹
Automatic Headphone Optimisation
Virtual Phones Technology

Conclusion:

The Sony has all the usual features expected in a high-end Android phone, Fingerprint sensor, great camera, OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) display, excellent sound. The Gorilla Glass 5 and IP65/68 water-resistant ensured the phone can take a knock or two. The battery used Smart Stamina to increase the battery life. The Aluminium frame which looked good had issues due to the slippery nature of the design resulting the phone could fall out of a pocket/hand easily. This however can be addressed with some phone cases which Jim will have covered.

The camera is lower in the back of the phone, which can result in the finger blocking the camera. Ignoring the niggles of personal choice, this is a Smartphone, looks good, feed good, works great, excellent software, abundance of advance features is a favourite from Sony.

https://www.sonymobile.com/ie/products/phones/xperia-xz3/display/ €799

Liam Burke is a regular Sony contributor reviewer here and today he shares his thoughts on the all new Sony Xperia XZ3

Design:-

Sony has kept its current design in the new Xperia XZ3 and even though its slightly longer they have reduced the weight by 5g and thickness of the phone 1.2mm from the previous Xperia XZ2 it feels lighter and very balanced in the hand.

As the rear of the phone is made from Corning Gorilla Glass5 it can feel a bit slippery in the hand so a case would be recommended. A case also makes finding the rear finger print sensor easier as I found its position is a bit too low. The beveled edges on the rear of the phone make it look very premium.

Sony has still kept its camera to a single 19 Mega Pixel camera sensor also on the rear is the NFC sensor, the camera led flash, laser auto-focus sensor and an infrared color sensor. As with other Sony Xperia’s it has a dedicated camera button on the side of the phone, along with the power button and volume rocker. A handy feature is that the sim-card and micro sd tray can be pulled out without the need for a pin or special tool.

On the front there are the two front facing speakers, USB-C port but no headphone jack as is the norm these days. The Xperia XZ3 is rated for IP65/68 so its water-resistant and dust-proof, so no need to worry if it gets wet.

Screen:-

Now onto the screen which is the biggest improvement over the Xperia XZ2 where Sony have moved from LED to OLED. The screen is a 6 inch Quad HD+ pOLED (1440 x 2880 pixels) High Dynamic Range (HDR) with 18:9 aspect ratio. The screen is brilliant its so bright and vibrant it gives excellent colour reproduction even in sunny conditions I found it very easy to view all the details on the screen. Sony have really done a great job here bringing their tech from their Bravia TVs onto this phone, watching streaming content like Netflix you do get to see every detail.

Again Sony has plenty of options in the Display settings so you can get the most of out that OLED Screen with options Night Light which tints your screen amber making it easier to look at your screen in dark conditions.

Sony have also included a nifty feature called Side Sense which uses sensors at the side of the screen to bring up a menu of your most used apps and Settings, I found this quiet a useful feature as you didn’t need to swipe back into the main menu to goto your apps.

As the screen is OLED there is plenty of options in the settings that you can select, you can choose to have it always on or configure when you want the screen to turn on i.e. only activate the screen when the phone is lifted so you can see the time and notifications that you have.

Audio :-

The Xperia XZ3 has plenty of Sony’s Audio tech like Hi-Res Audio,LDAC, DSEE HX, ClearAudio+ and “S-Force Front Surround Sound” speakers. Again it has Sonys “Dynamic Vibration System” which gives you something of a vibration rumble feedback on sound, something I found more handy when playing games instead of watching movies or listening to music.

As there is no headphone jack you will need to use the included adapter if you want to use your wired headphones or instead use USB-C wired headphones.The front facing Stereo speakers I found to have quiet a punch and didn’t distort the audio even at high volumes.

Camera:-

Sony have stuck with the same 19Mp Motion Eye single-lens camera that was on the Xperia XZ2, but they have improved the camera app with some nice features like having an icon for the previously used mode on the bottom of the screen. The integration with Google Lens is a good feature I found copying text from documents to be quiet a handy feature.

The default camera AI mode does a good job changing the settings for your picture automatically, so you don’t need to modify white balance and ISO etc.

There are other modes like Panorama and AR effect where you can add virtual animations to your photos like Dinosaurs or Superheros it’s a nice gimmick. The Smart launch feature which detects when you lift up the phone horizontally and opens the photo app, I found it hit and miss and I was quicker opening the app via the dedicated camera button on the side of the phone.

To help you get the perfect selfie Sony have bumped up the front camera to 13 Mp and have added a new Portrait Selfie Mode where you have options like Slender Face, Skin Brightness, Soft skin and Bokeh which blurs the background. Even in lowlight conditions I found the selfie pictures aren’t too grainy.

In the video mode you get the usual options on how you can tweak your settings, enabling Steadyshot did a good job at keeping the video smooth even when your moving around.

The Xperia XZ3 can record in 4K HDR the videos recorded with these settings recorded detail compared to videos recorded in HD mode. It also supports Full HD slow motion video recording at 960fps, I found it took a bit of practice to get these slow motion shots at the right time, I found it easier to use the Slow motion mode which records in 120fps and edit the video afterwards.

Battery:-

The battery capacity in the Xperia XZ3 is 3300mAh it also supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 (compatible charger supplied in the box) and Qi Wireless charging.

Sony also have their own tweaks to the battery that they call Stamina Mode which disables some background processes to make your battery last longer.

There is also a Battery Care feature which learns your battery charging patterns and for example if you charge your phone every night, it would slowly charge the battery during the night up to 90% then the hour before your wake up it fully charges the phone up to 100%. In my tests I was getting nearly 2 days of usage from a full charge.

Performance:-

The Xperia XZ3 runs Android Pie 9.0 out of the box, Sony has its own lightly skinned version of Android. I found the user experience very snappy as it has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor running with 4GB of RAM and 64 internal storage.

I noticed that downloading and uploading over Wi-Fi seems faster on the phone.If you have a Playstation 4 and you install the PS4 Remote Play app on the Xperia XZ3 then you can connect to your PS4 if the phone and PS4 are connected to the same network.

Full Specs:-

https://www.sonymobile.com/ie/products/phones/xperia-xz3/

Available to buy:- Three Billpay from €79 https://www.three.ie/online/voice/contract/sony-xperia-xz3/?src=p

Three Prepay €579 https://www.three.ie/online/voice/prepay/sony-xperia-xz3/?src=p

Three also have a limited time offer of a Free pair of Sony SBH90C High Res Audio earphones worth €189.99 when you buy online (While stocks last.)

And will be coming to Eir soon. From Sony Direct https://estore.sonymobile.com/ie/sony-xperia-xz3-liquid-black-uk-ie-312305/

Featured image by Jim O Brien at the Christmas Tech Showcase from Sony