The Sony Xperia Z1 is a BIG phone, especially if you are use to an iPhone sized mobile. It’s a large slab of glass and aluminium that has a nice weight to it and feel very comfortable in the hand. The Z1 feels like a really nice premium mobile, although the glass seems to attract dust like no other mobile used before. On the top is a headphone jack; On the right is the SIM card holder, power button, volume/zoom rocker and camera button; The bottom has the speaker; On the left are ports for microSD card, charger and the docking pins.
The ports all have covers on to make this a waterproof phone, you can take this and use it under water (up to 1m) for around 30 minutes, e.g. you might want to take a photo underwater. The covers do feel a little flimsy so it’ll be interesting to see how well they hold up over time. With the option of a dock you don’t need to remove the covers at all, you could just dock this to charge without using the USB charging cable.
Z1 Battery life is brilliant thanks to Sony adding some power management tools. It can automatically disable apps from using data when the screen is off (you can select which apps that applies to) and you can have location based wifi, so wifi is on at home but then automatically switches off when you’re out and about. It then automatically turns back on when you return home or arrive at work/a friends house/anywhere else you’ve designated as a wifi area.
The stock keyboard is OK, but on a screen this size the space bar was far too small and resulted in a lot of full stops being pressed by mistake. This little niggle was easily solved by installing the excellent Swiftkey which made much better use of the Z1 screen space available.
Sony have pre-installed a lot of software on the Z1 which unfortunately can’t be removed if it’s of no use to you. There are some gems, for example the album, music and video apps look really great and the music app allows you to ‘throw’ your tunes to an external speaker/headphones without needing to go via the bluetooth menu or installing 3rd party DNLA apps. You can do the same with your videos, ‘throwing’ them to a compatible TV, and while this was useful for home videos it was disappointing that this feature couldn’t be used with an LG TV to watch films downloaded from the Sony store, it’s likely you’ll have better success when streaming to Sony TVs.
The Z1 camera is whopping 20.7 megapixels and comes with lots of photo and video options, with the ability to download additional modes. I really love that this has a dedicated camera button, makes it so much easier than using the on screen controls.
A nice addition is the AR mode, which allows you to add animation to your video, for example a dinosaur stomping around (see video below). Generally these work really well, allowing you to move around the scene and look at objects from different angles, they add a bit of fun to videos, and it’s an impressive demonstration of how powerful the phone is to be able to render the animations in real time.
This performance is demonstrated again during gameplay, games are responsive and there wasn’t any lag in the controls. The large screen gives you lots of room for controlling the game while being able to see it at the same time and is one of the major advantages over playing games over a smaller screen mobile.
The Sony Xperia Z1 plays games really well, takes photos and videos really well and has a great battery life. This is a brilliant phone that does a lot to be different from other Android mobiles.
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