Successor to the highly successful Sony Xperia Z reviewed earlier in this column, the Xperia Z1 is Sony’s latest flagship smartphone capable of challenging behemoths like the iPhone 5s and the Samsung Galaxy S4.
Available in white, black, and purple, the Z1 retains the original Xperia Z’s stylish aluminium, tempered-glass design, and a beautiful five-inch high definition screen boasting a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels (full HD). The five-inch screen is equipped with Triluminos display technology and combined with the ‘X-Reality Picture Engine’, offers vibrant colours and razor sharp pictures, videos, games, and web pages. The Z1 is also designed to be fully waterproof thereby protecting your expensive acquisition safe from all manners of liquid ‘accidents’ that would put an end to most other phones.
Running on Android’s mobile operating system (version 4.2.2) and powered by a 2.2GHz Quad Core Processor and 2 GB RAM, the Z1 is capable of handling graphics and memory intensive videos, games, applications, and internet browsing with ease. The main highlight of the device, however, has to be its camera, which packs a whopping 20.7-megapixel sensor. The Z1’s camera is built with the same components as Sony’s legendary Cybershot compact digital cameras, meaning the Z1 really is the best camera phone available in the market today. The gadget utilises the company’s award-winning mobile image processing engine to deliver stunningly sharp, clear, bright, and detailed images even during low light, while Sony’s clear image zoom and motion detection technology
allow for blur-free photos. Capturing videos on the Z1 is also a treat as the gadget churns out detailed and distortion-free videos at full HD resolution.
The pictures and videos that you are likely to capture with the Xperia Z1 demand heavy storage and the 16 GB of on-board storage might not be adequate. However, you can upgrade by a further 64GB (via a micro-SD card) to fulfill your storage needs. Expecting heavy multimedia usage, Sony has packed the Z1 with a massive 3050 maH battery, which compares favourably to the Samsung Galaxy S4’s 2600maH battery and the iPhone 5s’ 1570maH. As with any high-end handset, the Z1 comes loaded with most of the standard connectivity options including LTE, NFC, DLNA, MHL, HSDPA, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to meet your internet and multimedia needs.
Yantrick’s verdict: expected to sell in Nepal at approximately Rs 70,000 after its early October launch in Asia, the Xperia Z1 is a top of the range smartphone and truly ‘the best of Sony’.
www.sonymobile.com