GADGET GIZMO REVIEW................... Sony Xperia

GADGET GIZMO  REVIEW

Sony Xperia

Sony tends to have a faster refresh cycle for the flagship Xperia Z range. The first Z series phone was made available mid 2013 and the design was quite refreshing at the time. It brought together the thin `glass slab-like' omni-balance design and water proofing for the first time. Omni-balance refers to a precisely balanced phone (neither side is heavier than the other) with perfect symmetry. The updated Xperia Z1 was showcased the same year, towards the last quarter while the Z2 made an appearance just a few months later in the first quarter of 2014. The Z3 was first showcased at IFA 2014 (September) and now we have the Z3+. Granted, there have been incremental improvements, but the problem is that design has remained largely unchanged -to the extent that the Z2, Z3 and Z3+ are virtually indistinguishable from each other. The other hiccup is that the hardware improvements are not enough to keep up with the other flagships. And finally , the shorter refresh cycle tends to rub some buyers the wrong way .

Coming to the Z3+, it is no doubt a beautiful and well-designed phone. Two slabs of glass and an aluminium frame -what's not to like? Unfortunately , there is a kink in the aluminium armour -literally! All four edges of the phone have an ugly polycarbonate bumper that breaks the symmetry of the aluminium chassis. It's been ostensibly placed to prevent glass breakage during a fall but detracts from overall design especially on the lighter colours.

It now has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset -the fastest currently available. There are four colours to choose from: black, white, copper and aqua green.It still includes the effective waterdust proofing but this time, the micro USB port and headphone jack are uncovered. Not having to fiddle around with flimsy plastic flaps is a refreshing change. Plus the charging pins (for the charging dock, an optional accessory for previous Z phones) are gone. There is still one plastic flap though -it covers the Nano SIM + micro SD tray .

The Xperia Z cameras have a large fan following and the Z3+ doesn't mess with the formula much. It still takes very crisp, detailed photographs with nice depth of field, accurate colours and excellent lowlight shots too. Data from the 20.7MP sensor is used to capture 8MP photographs with higher levels of detail. If you choose, you can capture stills in 20.7MP too. It's worth pointing out that the camera sits perfectly flush with the phone body . The front camera has been updated to 5.1MP resolution. We wished that optical image stabilisation had been included on the primary camera, especially since other flagships like the Galaxy S6, iPhone 6 Plus and LG G4 include it. Heck, OIS is even making it's way to mid-range phones too. Case in point is the InFocus M530, reviewed on this page itself.

Performance-wise, you can't fault this device and it blazes through all the multimedia and gaming you could want. The interface is fluid but there is lots of bloatware, including multiple Gameloft game demos, BigFLix, AVG, Kobo, LinkedIn and lots of Sony's own software. We wish they'd cut back on this.Battery life varies between a day to day and a half depending on use and we faced no issues with call quality or signal strength.

Coming to the bottom line, we feel that just the sleek design and waterproofing is not enough to carry the Xperia mantle forward. For this price class, omissions like an optically stabilised camera, fingerprint sensor, wireless charging, IR emitter and 2K screen are inexcusable. These are features you'll probably see on the next version, which as history suggests, is right around the corner. Right now, if you're considering a `55k+purchase, Samsung's Galaxy S6 edge, iPhone 6 or LG G4 are solid alternatives.

hitesh.bhagat

ET8JUL15