From last couple of months we are noticing that Sony’s mobile market share is continuously dipping, all thanks to new entrants in market. But from last few launches we had seen that Sony has decided to launch only two or three devices in a year, this makes things exciting, at least for Sony, and allow them to manage and maintains things in proper way.
Although Sony Xperia Z5 is one of the most attractive and best looking smartphone available in the market but still it is going hard for the company to sell this device at the given price point as its going to compete with flagship devices from Samsung, iPhone and others as well.
Build And Design Of Sony Xperia Z5 :-
The design is something which looks very much similar to what we had seen on earlier devices launched by Sony, it has got Omni-Balance design language, however here Omni-Balance looks more mature.
Back panel is little slippery and device can easily slip out of your hand, but thanks to the metal frame and rounded edges which allows you to hold it more properly and makes your grip better on it.
At front you will find an 5.2 inch full HD display panel with scratch proof glass, just above your display you will find 5MP front facing camera, nice metallic ear piece which will also act as speaker along with proximity and light sensors.
Below display you have another front facing speaker, and there is no buttons as it has got on screen touch buttons.
On right side you will find a power and sleep button in which Sony has embedded a finger-print scanner, which is one of the best thing any manufacturer has done so far in term of finger print scanner, and it works pretty well most of the time.
There are volume rockers as well as dedicated camera button on the left side, however placement of volume rockers seems awkward but you will get use to once you start using it.
At bottom you have your Micro USB port, and all thanks to Sony’s extra water resistance coating no longer needs flap, another thing which you will find at bottom is the lanyard eyelet, Sony is one of the few manufacturer to include this on their phone.
On left side you have a flap which cover your Dual SIM slot along with your Micro SD card slot which allows you to expand memory.
At top you will find your 3.5mm audio jack for your headphone and just next to it you will have your secondary mic for noise cancellation.
The back panel of this device is made up of matte glass panel, complete with an exquisite frosted, and one thing to love here is that it does not get finger prints easily.
There is a all new 23-megapixel camera along with LED flash, there is company’s branding along with NFC logo placed at the center of back.
This device do looks sturdy and feels premium in hand, the gold variant which we had received feels good in hand.
Hardware And Specs Of Sony Xperia Z5 :-
Specs of Sony Xperia Z5 is somewhat similar to of its predecessor, powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC, along with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage which can be further expandable up to 200GB. For connectivity you have also get Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, USB OTG, GLONASS, NFC, FM radio, and houses an 2900mAh battery.
This phone do supports USB OTG, but it will only work when you enable it from settings other wise you wont be able to access contents placed on your thumb drive.
Display Of Sony Xperia Z5 :-
Sony Xperia Z5 comes with 5.2 inch Full HD resolution, colors looks nice and punchy over here, brightness level is good and it provide quite a good viewing angle to the user, yes colors do looks washed out under direct sun light but still you can use it without any worry.
Many users over internet are complaining that Full HD screen is bit low for a flagship device, but in our opinion Full HD resolution is perfect for a smartphone.
Software Of Sony Xperia Z5 :-
Sony Xperia Z5 runs on Android 5.1.1 which is wrapped under Sony’s own custom UI, it do supports Themes which lets you change UI and Icons but there are not much options available, and for India there are very less free options available.
This device supports dual SIM slots and both of them supports 4G/LTE, although it only supports Cat 4 (150 MBPS), but nowadays most of the manufacturer’s are launching Cat 6 devices which supports faster connection.
It supports Quick Charge 2.0 and comes with UCH10 charger which supports output at 5v, 9v and 12v, we had tested this device and it was able to charge our device up to 25 percent in just 30 minutes.
The bad thing in UI is that it comes with lots of bloatwares, and the good thing is that most of those apps can be removed. Its nice to see that Sony has added some more functionality on its apps like Album apps lets your organize images more efficiently, there are lots of options in File Manager app and so on.
Finger Print Scanner Of Sony Xperia Z5 :-
Most of the recently launched devices either houses finger print scanner on back or at front side which always require additional functionality, but Sony has did a good job here and the had embedded it in power button, which means you will be using your thumb to unlock device so you can register your thumb for it. In our test that worked pretty well, it unlocks device in no time and all top of it, its very easy to reach.
Camera Of Sony Xperia Z5 :-
This Sony Xperia Z5 has got 23MP rear snapper which is capable of shooting nice images in all lighting condiotions, in day lights we had captured images and they contains nice amount of details and colors are also very accurate on them, even though macro shots turned out very well and you get nice details in images.
Dedicated camera buttons comes very handy on many occasions like while taking selfies or if you want to quickly launch camera, low lights images also looks very good however there are some noise on them but that can be only visible when you zoom into them.
If you use camera for little longer period of time, then phone start heating up and you will get pop-up message that camera app might close by its own, and it do happens and then in that case you have to wait phone to get cool down.
Another thing which we noticed is that camera takes couple of seconds in post-processing while saving image. Camera app allows you to shot in pro mode in which you can control settings according to your needs, and one thing here is that you can also shot video in pro-mode, a thing which you will not find in other smartphone’s.
We wished if company has added the support for RAW images but its not there, but we came to know that company is planning for it through an update.
At launch event, company has said this device support ‘Clear Image Zoom’ in which one will get clear image even if you ZOOM up to 5X, we tried this and it do provide good image but some colors looks washed out.
This camera is capable of shooting 4K videos but again within 4-5 minutes it get heats up and camera app closes. At front it has got 5.1 MP camera which do its jobs very well in good lights, but as soon as you shift to artificial light, image will get noise in it.
Performance And Final Verdict On Sony Xperia Z5 :-
No doubt, Sony Xperia Z5 is able to handle anything you throw on it, we played heavy games, did heavy multi-tasking and lots more but never faced any major lag. Yes heating is one of the main concern over here but apart from that everything worked like a charm.
With that said, we felt that price of this device is on higher side, at the same price or lesser than this you can easily get other flagship devices which perform very well.
Does this device worth of buying? Well this is the main concern over here, if you love Sony and looking for a good design smartphone which has good camera and build quality and never let you down in term of performance then this the device for you, yes you have to spend little more money.
