Sony Xperia Z2: Review

Nowadays, the demand for large-screen displays is shooting up. However, while people do need a bigger display phone, they do not want a tablet. If you too are looking for a phone with a ‘larger than average’ display, Sony Xperia Z2 might just be the right phone for you. Unfortunately, the world of smartphones is all about compromises, and with the Z2 you might have to compromise a little on the comfortability, unless you have large palms.

Sony launched its flagship Android phone, Sony Xperia Z2, a while a go. It sports a 5.2-inch display, which almost pushes it into the phablet genre, but we prefer to call it a slightly-larger phone. This premium smartphone has a minimalistic design that gives it a chic and classy look.

Design and Build

The Sony Z2 has an aluminium frame or chassis and sports a glass panel on the rear. It is 8.2 mm thick, with all the buttons conveniently placed in their locations. On the left is a water-tight port flap with a rubber gasket that protects the micro SIM slot and a micro USB port. Below that is a pogo pin connector for a magnetic charging dock.

The right side features a microSD card slot, which is also protected by a water-tight port flap. A power button and a volume rocker take their place on the same side too. A physical camera shutter release button is provided on the bottom half of the right side.

Moving to the top, a 3.5 mm audio jack and a secondary microphone are located, while the bottom sports the primary microphone.

The Sony Xperia Z2 sports a 5.2-inch IPS LCD display panel with a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels and a pixel depth of 424ppi. The glossy surface is a fingerprint magnet and you would have to ensure that you carry along a micro-fibre cloth, unless you opt for a matte-finished screen protector. Two sleek front-facing stereo speakers, a front-facing camera and a few sensors are the only ones that are seen on the display panel.

The rear camera features a 20.7MP 1/2.3-inch Exmor RS sensor and an F/2.0 Sony G Lens, along with a tiny, but powerful enough LED flash. The Z2 also has an IP58/IP55 certification, ensuring that the smartphone is both water and dust resistant. Sony claims that the Z2 can be used even while swimming, and while underwater, for up to 30 minutes (1.5 meters). Sadly, we did not get a chance to try the same.

The phone is elegantly built and is quite sturdy to hold, but handling the phone gets a little cumbersome due to the larger form-factor. The blocky design feels like you are holding on to a tile. Using the Z2 single handily is pretty much a task.   

Down below

The Z2 is a built using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset which features a quad-core 2.3GHz Krait 400 processor, 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 graphics processor. The phone includes a heat-pipe cooling technology to prevent the chipset from overheating. However, the phone still tends to heat up quite a bit when working on resource-hungry apps.    

It has 16GB of built-in storage, which can be further expanded up to 128GB using a microSD card. The connectivity options include 2G/3G, Bluetooth v4.0, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA, and a Wireless TV out. GPS, A-GPS and GLONASS are also included.

The phone is powered by a 3200 mAh battery that can fuel the phone for around 740 hours on the standby mode. Regular usage of up to 19 hours can be expected. The Z2 is 8.2 mm thick and weighs 163 grams.

User Interface and Performance

The Sony Xperia Z2 is powered by latest Android OS v4.4.2 KitKat with Sony’s custom UI. The Sony’s custom Android interface is pretty neat and clutter free.

The app drawer can be personalized; apps can easily be uninstalled or rearranged according to your preference. A window on the left of the screen brings up the customisation features. A set of tiny apps are bundled for quick use.

The Xperia also has a whole bunch of bloatware apps like Sony Music Jive, Big Flix, Sony LIV, Sketch, Line, Social Life, Pixlr Express, Office Suite and What’s New.

The Sony Xperia Z2 offers quite a satisfying performance; the phone does not feel sluggish nor does it freeze. Applications open smoothly, we experienced absolutely no delay in launching new applications.

As mentioned earlier, the display is a full HD 1080p IPS Triluminos display with a 424ppi pixel density. The picture quality is crisp, bright, and vibrant. The display has a large viewing angle too—thanks to the IPS panel used. Display legibility in bright sunlight is pretty decent, which means the is clear enough to read even on a bright sunny day.

Camera

The 20.7MP rear camera sports a feature-rich camera app with multiple creative modes. The camera performance is decent enough with sharp, crisp and vibrant pictures. The camera also offers 4K UHD video recording.

We clicked a few shots from the Z2 (at the superior auto mode) in broad daylight. We also took some macro shots and a few at night. We found that the picture quality was persistently good in dim and well-lit areas alike. However, night shots were a tad grainy even with the flash. The images captured by the 20MP sensor have a good balance of colour, brightness and contrast, but loses out on overall sharpness.

 

Day shots

A Macro shot

A night shot without flash

A night shot with flash

 

Verdict and Pricing

In terms of its display quality and core performance, the Sony Xperia Z2 can supersede the other rivals—Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One M8. In our opinion, keeping in mind the compromising factor, Sony Xperia Z2 would be a good choice among the latest smartphones available in the market today.

The Sony Xperia Z2 currently is available for a street price of Rs 48,990 and is bundled along with a smart wristband. If you want a smartphone with similar performance, you could opt for the Samsung Galaxy S5 and save up almost Rs 10,000. However, you would have to compromise on certain factors such as display quality, the camera quality and 1GB lower RAM and water and dust resistance that the Z2 offers.