That Verge review is brutal.
The Verge have got it wrong. Xperia Z is a solid device, complaining about it being S4 Pro and not SD600 is BS because it loses like 10% in benchmarks and basically nothing in real world performance.
That design score is pretty stupid, the Xperia Z has been winning design awards all over the place, the reviewer needs to get his/her eyes tested.
The camera could use some improvement, but the reviewer seems to have bought lock, stock and barrel into HTC's idea that less pixels are better, when so far all of the sample shots from the One seem to be the same or worse than the Xperia Z, especially when sampled down to 4MP in a like-for-like comparison. The HTC One only keeps an advantage in low light photography, which is not the be all and end all of phones/cameras. He also doesn't seem to understand what HDR is.
As for ecosystem he has marked it down because PS-Mobile is lacking games, but it still has a dedicated gaming service that few other Android phones have. If the GS4 gets a 9/10 for ecosystem it makes no sense because having something is better than having nothing. The general Android ecosystem for phones is surely a 9/10 by itself and stuff like small apps and PSM are just bonuses.
Anyway, I just don't think the reviewer did a very good job, some of the negatives seem to be very, very contrived as if they were looking for something to complain about. Also, Sony are idiots they should have sent out reviewers the best devices with the JDI screens. I know the UK has a big allocation of them, but they needed to make sure that reviewers all got the best version, even if it is slightly underhanded.