Old look saved by nifty new feature
I’VE long had a soft spot for Sony’s Xperia range of smartphones. Early in 2013, at a time when other manufacturers were churning out unassuming iphone clones with curved corners, the Xperia Z arrived on the scene, a striking, unapologetically square-shouldered slab of device that demanded your attention and respect.
It had oodles of processing power, a five-inch, full-hd touch screen, plenty of features and an excellent camera, making it a worthy contender to take on the top dogs, Samsung and Apple. It also had a superpower they couldn’t match: the ability to survive a dunking under water.
Over the next four-and-a-half years, successive generations of the Xperia line retained this “Omnibalance” design which, Sony said, was focused on “creating balance and symmetry in all directions”. Many of them were waterresistant, an ability several other manufacturers – most notably Apple and Samsung – have since brought to their flagship devices.
The latest Xperia to land on South African shores is the XZ Premium and a single glance is enough to reveal that those Omnibalance genes remain dominant.
Much as I’ve admired those angular good looks over the years, I must admit that familiarity is starting to breed just a teeny bit of boredom, if not contempt.
Against the curved edges and rounded corners of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and LG G6, the XZ Premium looks dated.
And then, there’s those enormous top and bottom bezels. In this age of “Infinity Displays” and shrinking bezels, the Xperia family’s prominent “forehead” and “chin” are starting to look increasingly retro and not in a good way.
Even if you like this design aesthetic, there’s no escaping the fact that a larger frame around the display makes for a bigger device. And the XZ Premium is a big phone, significantly wider and taller than the Galaxy S8, yet the latter has a 5.8-inch screen compared to the Sony’s 5.5-inch display.
On the plus side, it’s a truly stunning display thanks to the panel’s 3840 x 2160, 4K resolution and an eye-popping pixel density of 807 pixels per inch (PPI) – by way of contrast, the Galaxy S8, no slouch in the eye-candy department, packs in a “mere” 570 PPI.
The downside of an ultra-highdefinition display is that it chews through precious power a lot faster than lesser screens, so it’s baffling that Sony has equipped it latest flagship with a 3 000 mah battery, significantly smaller than those found in most of its rivals.
The cameras have generally been a strong suit of the Xperia line and the XZ Premium is no exception. It might not have dual lenses as found in the latest topend handsets from Huawei and LG, but the 19-megapixel rear camera claims significantly better low-light performance than earlier models thanks to the pixels being nearly 20% bigger.
The “Predictive Capture” feature snaps images immediately before and after you press the shutter button, allowing you to choose the best shot or save all of them.
As with its photography-friendly predecessors, the XZ Premium has a dedicated shutter button, which also acts as a shortcut to the camera app when long pressed.
The lack of optical image stabilisation is a disappointing omission, though.
But the camera’s standout feature is “Super Slo-mo” video capture, allowing the XZ Premium to shoot slow-motion videos at an astonishing 960 frames per second (FPS) compared to the iphone 7’s 240 FPS. Admittedly, it can sustain this for only two seconds at a time and resolution drops to 720p in the process, but it’s a really cool trick and might well be the decider for smartphone video aficionados.
The XZ Premium is no laggard in the processing power department either, coming equipped with the Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 system on a chip, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of built-in storage which is expandable through an aftermarket microsd card. It runs the most recent commercially available version of Android, 7.1.1 Nougat.
If I’m no longer smitten by the Xperia family’s looks, one trait I’ve continued to admire has been the ability of successive generations to shrug off the wet stuff. I was pleased to see that the XZ Premium is IP68 rated, meaning it can survive being submerged in water to depths of 1.5m for 30 minutes.
While I wouldn’t recommend deliberately taking this Sony, or any other water-resistant phone, for a swim, it’s liberating to know you can monitor email at the poolside or listen to music in the bath without worrying that a careless fumble might spell doom for what is probably one of your most pricey possessions.
Which brings us to the price tag. The XZ Premium will set you back a whopping R15 999 on prepaid, with contracts starting at R599 a month.
That’s quite a bit more than topend competitors like the Galaxy S8, but if you’re a fan of the Xperia line and looking for a differentiator in the form of unrivalled slowmotion video capture, it’s worth a closer look. Follow Alan Cooper on Twitter @alanqcooper.