A classy flagship with great battery life

A classy flagship with great battery life
Welcome to a Digital Camera Battery specialist of the Sony Digital Camera Battery
When you're trying to compete in the phone-making game, there are certain challenges. On the one hand, you want to dazzle customers with innovative features. On the other hand, you want to keep the suit-wearing shareholders happy with growth and strong, continued sales. The bottleneck in this equation is often technology. You can't force it to progress. So once you've more or less caught up, you're left with a choice: Innovate with software/hardware design, or take a risk with gimmicky features. Any of the above will do in lieu of the (unspeakable) alternative -- not releasing a new model this year.
We're not trying to preload this review of Sony's new Z3 flagship, which arrives barely six months after its predecessor. Or maybe we are. What we're definitely doing is spelling it out right here in the intro: The Z3 looks a lot like the Z2 with batteyr like sony NP-F550 battery, sony NP-FR1 battery, sony NP-FM50 battery, sony NP-FM51 battery, sony NP-F10 battery, sony NP-FE1 battery, Sharp VL-Z900W battery, Canon BP-512 battery, Canon BP-508 battery, sony DSC-T7 battery, Sony NP-68 battery, Sony NP-98 battery, and after a quick glance at the spec sheet, you might argue it sounds a lot like it too. This is pertinent because, by its own admission, Sony isn't doing very well at competing in the phone-making game. Given the above, is the Z3 going to tempt existing customers to upgrade? Or perhaps lure those over from other brands? T-Mobile will be stocking it this fall, though the price isn't yet known. Currently it's £550 in the UK -- a touch above the HTC One and Galaxy S5. Let's have a look, shall we?
For a phone that, initially at least, looks a lot like the one it's meant to replace the Z3 has a few tricks up its sleeve. Best of all is the standout battery life. Android photographers will love the camera too. It's easy to recommend the Z3, unless you're upgrading from the Z2, of course.
As we hinted in the intro, the Xperia Z3 has a lot in common with the Xperia Z2. When we reviewed that phone back in April, we had plenty of good things to say about it. Mostly how far along the display had come. The good news is, that's one of the things the Z3 inherits -- a 5.2-inch full HD Triluminos panel with X-Reality (you can watch Sony explain what those marketing terms mean here). The silicon is remarkably familiar too. The Z3 boats a 2.5GHz quad-core processor, up from 2.3GHz in the Z2. But both are Snapdragon 801 chips (MSM8974AB in the Z2 vs. the Z3's MSM8974AC if you're keeping score). Both handsets have a 20.7-megapixel camera and run Android 4.4 KitKat.
Then, of course, there's the design. Xperia phones in general aren't known for their bold and varied aesthetic, especially not the Z series. If you lined them up from the original Xperia Z through to the Z3, you'd mostly be picking at details to tell them apart. The original Xperia Z might cast more or less the same shadow as the Z3, but the newest flagship has a much more premium feel thanks to the matte-finish metal edges. The corners are actually nylon -- to make them less prone to dings should you drop it -- but you wouldn't notice unless you were looking closely.
The buttons and ports are still hidden under sealable caps to help keep it waterproof, with micro-USB on the left side, and nano- (not micro-) SIM and a memory card slot on the right. There's still a dedicated camera button on this side too, which is always nice. Other internals remain the same this time: 3GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. If you were a fan of the slightly generous top and bottom bezels that Sony seems so fond of, well, good news -- they're still here too.
For all its familiarity, the Z3 is still its own phone. It's slightly trimmer by about one millimeter in each dimension, and at 152 grams, it's lighter than its 163-gram predecessor, making it less prone to butterfingers. It's also more waterproof than before and is now fully dust-resistant (rated to IP65/68, up from IP55/58), which means it can sit in 1.5 meters of water for a full half-hour. Finally, the camera has some new features (more on that later), and the display is brighter.
All things considered, while Sony marketing is duty-bound to argue that this is the best Xperia Z ever, with reasonable improvements on many of the key specifications, we're willing to roll with it. Not all specs are up, though: Weirdly, the battery capacity is actually down from 3,200mAh to 3,100mAh. More on that later, though.