If you are fans of the Sony Bravia Series of televisions and want the same ultimate viewing experience on your smartphone bundled with the best of hardware under the hood and the ultimate Android experience, the Sony Xperia Z2 is the one for you. The update to the previous generation flagship, the Xperia Z1, Sony has added the best and latest to it and made it their best product ever. So let’s get on with its review, shall we?
Body and Design:
Sony has really not put in as much effort as they should have had on the device considering that it will be pitching up against the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and the upcoming iPhone. It is a simple rectangular bar, flat at both the front and back with a glass panel on each end. This is something which was found before on the iPhones. The edges of the phone are quite rounded at the corners and it totally flat at the rest of the four sides. All the card slots and charging and headphone jacks too are covered since Sony has made this a water resistant and dust proof phone. The phone sure does have a lot of bezels above and below the screen making it much bigger and bulkier for the 5.2” display, but that is all actually to fit in the extra hardware and the big battery. The build quality is quite robust and compared to the previous generation Xperia Z & Z1and the back of the phone is pretty much empty except for the 20.7 MP camera and a single LED flash.
Display:
The display on the device is terrific with Sony bringing all their television technology on the small screen. The screen is a 5.2” IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 @ 424 ppi. It contains the Sony X-Reality Engine from their Bravia series TVs and their much appreciated Triluminos Display. The picture quality is amazing and playing and games and watching HD media content is really fun. Every detail is very clear on this display and the colour reproduction is simply amazing, so are the viewing angles owing to an IPS display.
Hardware:
The Z2 has the best of the hardware running under the hood. It is run by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset with Quad Core Krait 400 processor clocked at 2.3 GHz. The graphics are handled by a very capable Adreno 330 GPU and it has all the usual sensors.
Camera:
The camera on the Z2 is a 20.7 MP using the EXMOR technology for better, sharper and brighter pictures. This is the only camera after the 16 MP on the Galaxy S5 capable of Ultra HD video recording of 2160p @ 30 fps; though the initial testing done did show that the 4K video recording is a bit buggy yet, so Sony will have to work on that a bit more. The camera is quite well equipped for some amazing low light images and all the regular shooting modes. The secondary 2.2 MP camera is also not a bad one with Full HD video capabilities for Video calls and Skype calls. Though if you are a selfie lover, then you will surely not be disappointed; though the single LED flash on the back is quite a downer.
OS:
The best part about this new generation phone is the latest on the hardware as well as the software. Sony has their custom Timescape UI over Android 4.4.2 KitKat. The UI seriously does look amazing and it great to use. But the Stock Android is always the best and smoothest as it does not have the huge overlay burden. That is not really much of an issue on this device since the horsepower this device has, can handle 10 times this load quite satisfactory. So multitasking on this device is surely a breeze and you will totally love playing around on this. Also the Android OS means the entire Google services bundle is included in this. So functionality wise, the Play Store is more than equipped for everything you want your phone can do.
Features:
Since there are so many new phones and flagships coming up with similar specs and size, Sony is concentrating more on the USPs of the phone than just the brand value and sheer power of the hardware. The biggest USP of this device is the camera. After the Nokia Lumia 1020 and the Nokia Lumia 1520, the Xperia Z2 is the only with a 20+ MP camera. And this is not just a gimmick but this actually works. The image quality is just amazing. And if that is not all, you can even attach an external lens using NFC to the phone for a better camera experience. Also Sony claims this phone to be water resistant for 30 minutes and upto 1.5 meters and dust proof. Our tests sure confirmed it, but you cannot really prevent water from going in completely. Also the Triluminos display with the X-Reality engine makes this display the best yet.
Memory & Battery:
These two things are like the most important in a cell phone. What Sony has done is really impressive. They have provided an inbuilt 16 GB of storage so that you do not fell short of storage for your apps and games and instead provided a memory card slot of upto 128 GB where you can simply store almost infinite media and data. And to support this huge media content’s enjoyment; Sony has provided a 3200 mAh battery in the device which can last you a day easy on heavy usage; though power users might end up running for the power socket much sooner.
So overall the Sony Xperia Z2 is the best Xperia yet and it will be interesting to see how it fares with the likes of Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8, Nokia Lumia 930 & 1520 and the other flagships across the world. The phone costs INR 49,990/- on leading online shopping portals and is available in three colour options.
Team DainikDisha