Quick Thoughts on the Sony Xperia Z3+

The Sony Xperia Z3+ is probably one of the devices that I am least excited about this year, seeing that it is a pretty minor bump over the Xperia Z3. Nonetheless, I got my hands on one on launch day, and would like to share some of my quick thoughts on the device.

As the name implies, the Xperia Z3+ is supposed to be a spiffed up version of the Xperia Z3. At first glance, nobody will fault you for thinking that it looks exactly like the Xperia Z3. Mind you, not that looking like the Xperia Z3 is a bad thing. The Xperia Z3 while understated, is still superbly build, and clad with premium materials. Though this year with the Xperia Z3+, Sony had went on to improve its looks further.

The front speaker grills has been moved to the top and bottom edges. A more discreet location reminiscent of the Xperia Z2. The magnetic charger port which I had always found a little annoying to use has been removed in favour of a cap-less Micro USB port, located at a more conventional location at the bottom. The phone also underwent a diet, and lost 0.4 mm off its thickness, though at the cost of a smaller battery over its predecessor.

While I was hoping for a more radical design change to the Xperia Z line of devices, there are very little to complain about the Xperia Z3+ when it comes to build quality, and design. Sony's Omni-balance design language has held up well over the years, and has been refined with each iteration. All cumulating into what would become the Xperia Z3+, the best looking Xperia device yet.

The front of the device houses a 5.2-inches Full HD 1080 x 1920 pixels IPS LCD display, at ~424 ppi. While it is not as high resolution as other devices with QHD like the LG G4 or Galaxy S6, the display still looks great. In my time with it, I have never found myself wishing it had more pixels. Viewing angles are decent too, colour reproduction (quick tip: turn off X-reality display mode) are nice, and it has good visibility outdoors.

The phone is packing the somewhat controversial Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 Octo-core CPU. Which is accompanied by an Adreno 430 GPU, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage. This is supposed to be a slightly revised version of the original 810 processor, though honestly I am unable to tell by using the device normally.

I am not a fan of running benchmarks, and comparing numbers. To me what is important is how the phone performs as a whole in day to day, real-world usage. In this aspect, much like the HTC One M9 I have tested earlier, the processor was able to handle most of what I need the device to do.

I did notice the phone's tendency to warm up easily around the top-rear portion of the device. Using basic features like hangouts, social media apps, and web browsing outdoors warms up the rear quickly. So does playing games, or watching YouTube videos. However the temperature never got to the point of being "hot" in my opinion, and is still bearable to the touch. The device does get a little warmer than I would have liked when using the device while charging, but to be fair, that is something I noticed on the Galaxy S6 as well.

When I was doing my camera test under the sun, the phone got really warm, but I did not see prompts telling me the device is getting too hot though. The only times the heat has ever affected the usage of the device was when recording 4K video. I was only able to record about 3 minutes of footage before the camera app had to shut down. Other than that, while the device does get warm more easily than other devices, I have not found that to affect the performance of the device in day to day use.

Overall it is not something that I am overly concern with, unless you are going to be doing prolonged durations of photo/video-taking under broad daylight often. It is probably important to note as well that the Xperia Z3+ I had came out of the box with the new update (28.0.A.7.24) that were supposed to help with thermal management.

Talking about performance, Sony’s UI performs remarkably well. The phone responds to button presses, touches on the screen with little to no lag. The UI is snappy, and animations were smooth. The only hesitation that stood out to me was when pressing the recent apps button, which had a split second pause. I also spotted inexplicable random pauses once in a while as well, but I suspect those are more down to Android Lollipop 5.0.2 than anything else. Overall in terms of performance, Sony has done a good job here.

The design of the UI is pleasing to the eye too. Sony stuck with mostly stock-Android look and feel, and added some minor upgrades to them. Take the notification shade for example, which looks like stock-Android, but allows for users to customise the settings to their liking. A lot of Sony’s own app icons and UI has been updated to include more Material Design elements, which is definitely much welcomed. While there are still some areas that could be improved, overall I think Sony did a decent job.

Though it is not all rainbows and butterflies. One thing I noticed immediately was that there seems to be more bloatware compared to the Xperia Z3 Compact I had. I am not just talking about Sony apps (which are just as annoying for those who does not use them), but third-party apps as well. I guess that is how Sony is trying to make more money out of their devices, by bundling more pre-installed apps. On the bright side, almost all of them can be uninstalled o disabled if you wish, including some of Sony’s own bloat.

The bloat does not stop at just apps though. I can understand including a few photos, a single movie, a single music track. Basically to showcase the camera, display, and the speaker quality. But does Sony really need to advertise their own products so aggressively? The image above is just one of a bunch of other photos on the phone, and it feels more like an advertisement for their “alpha” camera range than anything else. Of course you can simply delete them all if you wish, and at most this is a minor annoyance.

The Xperia Z3+ packs a 2,930 mAh battery capacity, which is a tad smaller than the Xperia Z3’s 3,100 mAh battery. This does make the phone 0.4 mm slimmer than the Xperia Z3, but really I would rather they kept the same thickness, and battery size. That is not to say battery life is bad though. I am seeing slightly better battery life compared to other flagship devices this year like the Galaxy S6, One M9, and LG G4. I was able to get through a day (14 - 16 hours) of moderate to heavy use with about 4 hours and 40 minutes of screen-on Time. On lighter usage, I have seen upwards of 5 hours of screen-on time.

(Keep in mind as well that the Xperia Z3+ only has a FHD display compared to the Galaxy S6’s QHD display, and that the Galaxy S6 has a smaller battery capacity.)

However compared to the Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact, the battery life feels like a step backwards. Snapdragon 810 has not been known to be frugal on battery, compound that with the fact that it has a smaller battery pack means that battery life is bound to suffer.

For the forth flagship device in a row, Sony is using a similar 20.7 MP Sony Exmor RS camera. It has a relatively fast f/2.0 aperture, along with one of the larger sensor compared to the rest of the pack at 1/2.3”. While on paper the camera specification might look similar, but in practice I am definitely seeing improved camera performance over past generation flagship devices.

On the Xperia Z2 and Z3 Compact, my biggest complain with the image quality was with Sony’s image processing. Sony tend to apply over-aggressive noise-reduction, causing loss of details and sharpness, something that becomes apparent when you view the image at a larger size. With the Xperia Z3+, I am happy to say that the image processing has been much improved.

(Z3+)

(Z3 Compact)

(Z3+ 100% Crop)

(Z3 Compact 100% Crop)

Images taken by the Xperia Z3+ preserves details, and sharpness better than the Xperia Z3 compact, and the images generally look pretty good. But there are still signs of slightly over-aggressive noise-reduction at times. Colours generally look pretty accurate and vibrant, though sometimes they turn out too muted when under direct lighting.

(Images are taken on Superior Auto mode)

In low-light conditions or at night, the camera still produces decent results. Though due to the slightly heavy-handed image processing, sometimes it is hard to tell whether the lack of details is due to minor camera shake, or just the image processing at work. This is where the LG G4 and Galaxy S6 really pulls ahead in terms of camera performance. While digital stabilisation is decent, having optical image stabilisation would definitely have helped.

Though with most modern smartphones, unless you are pixel-peeping, most of the shots taken are going to look pretty decent. Especially when most of the time people view the photos only on the phone itself, or share it on social media.

The ability to go all the way up to ISO 128000 is a nice trick, but something that I rarely found use for. While it is cool to still be able to capture an image in really dim conditions, the image quality is not that great by any stretch of the imagination.

Normally I would have talked about the camera UI first, but for the Xperia Z3+, I decided to leave it for the last because of how much it affected my opinion of an otherwise decent camera hardware. The camera app is bad.

In Superior Auto Mode, you are restricted to an 8 MP shot. To use 20.7 MP, you need to use Manual Mode, which does not actually gives you much control. At 20.7 MP, you are unable to use HDR mode, or adjust the ISO. To do that you need to select 8 MP setting in Manual Mode. Then there are all those modes. “Style Portrait, AR Mask, Face in Picture, Sound photo, AR fun, Multi camera, 4K video (why is this even a separate mode from video?), timeshift video, AR Effect, sweep panorama, and more.” Most of which are more gimmick than of real use, and would be better off being its own stand alone app.

The camera has a weird quirk as well. Tapping on the viewfinder to change the area of focus does not change the focus immediately. Only when you tap the capture button, it searches for focus in that area before capturing. Which makes the camera take longer than it should have to capture an image. Continuously tapping the capture button, the camera keeps refocusing before capturing each shot, even though the focus area is the same. This results in slow shot to shot time. In comparison on most other smartphones, tapping on an area changes the focus immediately, so that when you tap the shutter button, the capture is instant.

I also noticed a slight delay when capturing photos, which I suspect is the phone trying to save and process the image. Comparing it to other devices like the Galaxy S6, LG G4, or iPhone 6, the capture speed is noticeably slower. (When I was doing the camera test, I had with me the BlackBerry Q10, and even that had faster capture speed.)

DXOmark rated the Xperia Z3+ quite favourably, and I can definitely see why. The image quality is definitely decent, and a nice improvement over the Xperia Z3/Z3C. Though it is definitely not quite at the standard that Samsung, LG, or Apple is at. If you are willing to live with its quirks, it is a decent camera. Though I hope with future updates Sony will try to improve the camera further. As the leading camera sensor manufacturer in the market, it is a little baffling why Sony smartphones has not been up to par compared with other smartphone manufacturers using Sony's camera sensors as well.

Full resolution images for comparison: Xperia Z3+, Xperia Z3 Compact, Galaxy S6, One M9, LG G4, Nexus 6, Note 4, iPhone 6

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As an incremental update to the Xperia Z3, I was not terribly excited the Xperia Z3+ to begin with. Which is why it kind of surprised me how much I grew to like the device. The build quality is solid, and feels great in hand. The performance, and look and feel of the UI is great. It has top end specs, a nice display, and front-firing stereo speakers. Battery life is also one of the better one amongst flagship devices this year. I really enjoyed the fact as well that the Micro USB port is no longer covered under a flap, something that I found troublesome while using the Z3 Compact. It also manages to look premium while maintaining its IP68 (Ingress Protection) rating.

It has it quirks, mainly the camera, the bloat-wares, and its tendency to warm up a little too easily for my liking (both of which I hope Sony will improve upon with future software updates). Other than those, I really have very little complain about the device as a whole.

But, the biggest problem the Xperia Z3+ faces is the fact that the Xperia Z3 exists too, and is now selling at a discount. Most of what I said above the Xperia Z3+ above, can largely be applied to the Xperia Z3, with the exception of the cap-less USB port. The Xperia Z3+ does have other minor advantages like better camera quality, and a more refined design. But the Xperia Z3 has it advantages over the Xperia Z3+ too, like better thermal management, and better battery life.

With the Xperia Z3 still in the market, the Xperia Z3+ is a difficult device to recommend even to the most avid of Sony fans. While it is a decent device that I actually quite enjoy using, by and large, I do not personally think that it justifies the additional asking price of the Xperia Z3+ over the Xperia Z3.

If you ask me to choose one main reason for liking the Xperia Z3+, it would be the fact that it drove the price of the Xperia Z3 down. That says everything.