I for one would prefer poor viewing angles, so people can’t see what i’m doing from the sides without the quality reduction from a privacy screen protector.
Idiots looking at their phones from the side are idiots.
Well the ZL doesn't have a panel lottery, they all use the best version since there is a lesser requirement. So if The Verge ever review ZL then it should get a much higher score in that respect. I used a Z with the best panel and it is amazing, but you can't use maximum brightness because it just makes everything look grey, also the grey UI does the phone no favours.
I'd be surprised if they even review the ZL.
It's going to be the main US/Canada SKU, so they should get a review unit in the next couple of weeks.
Ugh, that Verge review... expected as much. It is Verge reviewing a Sony phone, after all.
I shake my head at their score for design... absolutely ridiculous. They seem to complain about holding the phone because of the size, but I'm not sure that necessitates a score of 7 for design. In the wrap-up they go on about Sony using a glass design when others are moving away from it as a negative... really? Stupid. Makes me want to see what they have to say about the ZL and reduction in overall size, the softer and more rounded back. It'll likely remain a 7 and they'll toss in some other thing to complain about.
I do think that Sony needs to splurge on a high-end screen or something for the next phone though, but that isn't through The Verge pissing on the viewing angle. Whenever they announce a phone, it still surprises me that Sony just throws in a fairly standard TFT screen with good brightness and wipes their hands clean.
From the Verge comments:
Enjoyable.
Does anyone know if the Z can be bought outright at Sony Style in Canada? Or are we only getting the ZL through the carriers?
Why would you even read The Verge for reviews? They're terrible compared to, say, GSM Arena.
Featuring a fancy new 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon chip, you’d expect the Xperia Z to breeze through anything and everything thrown at it. That’s mostly the case — there’s no app that unduly slows down this phone — however you’ll be hard-pressed to distinguish any speed advantage over its dual- or even single-core predecessors in day-to-day use. The user interface is not as immediately responsive as Samsung’s standard-setting Galaxy S III, nor are its animations anywhere near as fluid. Along with the sluggish camera app, this unimpressive performance leaves you feeling rightfully underwhelmed by the new four-core lifestyle.
I can live with that. I suppose it will also depend on when the2014 flagship will arrive. Either way, can't wait toget a ZL. Still no firm dates for Canada tho
lol. That reviewer is a dumbass, I wont even bother pointing out why. But whatever, to each his own.
The only thing good about that review are the photos of that sexy white XZ. Damn.
The Verge really faulted Sony for going with an all-glass design "while the competition is moving away from it?" The fact that Sony wasn't falling in line with the cheapo-looking plastic revolution is a negative? I don't know what to say...
While this seems like a nice handset, it just seems to continue Sony's trend of releasing a generally underwhelming handset - last year's specs when new ones are just around the corner. For example, why not delay it a couple of weeks to get the vastly more powerful Snapdragon 600 instead of going with the S4? It doesn't make much sense if Sony wants to remain competitive, but they keep doing it. The HTC One is coming out in the US in two weeks with a noticeably better screen, much more powerful internals, comparable camera (at least), and vastly superior speakers, as well as much more intriguing software and design.
S600 is barely faster than S4. it just has higher clock rates. Screen is HTC strongest area where it has beat all others cell phone makers. rest is upto to personal preference like i hate sense and design is nothing new its just like ip5 and bbz10
And what powerful internals ?
While this seems like a nice handset, it just seems to continue Sony's trend of releasing a generally underwhelming handset - last year's specs when new ones are just around the corner. For example, why not delay it a couple of weeks to get the vastly more powerful Snapdragon 600 instead of going with the S4? It doesn't make much sense if Sony wants to remain competitive, but they keep doing it. The HTC One is coming out in the US in two weeks with a noticeably better screen, much more powerful internals, comparable camera (at least), and vastly superior speakers, as well as much more intriguing software and design.
The Snapdragon 600 is 40% more powerful than the S4 Pro in the Xperia, as claimed by Qualcomm; early benchmarks support these claims. It's much more than 'barely' faster. The speakers, mic, and IR Blaster are also very cool additions. Sense is up to personal preference. Design is up to a point as well, although aluminum almost universally carries a more 'premium' feel, and the HTC is up to Apple standards in build quality. There's really not much reason to release this phone with last year's specs at this point in time and expect to be competitive in the high end space, especially with the impending GSIV announcement.
The Snapdragon 600 is 40% more powerful than the S4 Pro in the Xperia, as claimed by Qualcomm; early benchmarks support these claims. It's much more than 'barely' faster. The speakers, mic, and IR Blaster are also very cool additions. Sense is up to personal preference. Design is up to a point as well, although aluminum almost universally carries a more 'premium' feel, and the HTC is up to Apple standards in build quality. There's really not much reason to release this phone with last year's specs at this point in time and expect to be competitive in the high end space, especially with the impending GSIV announcement.
While this seems like a nice handset, it just seems to continue Sony's trend of releasing a generally underwhelming handset - last year's specs when new ones are just around the corner. For example, why not delay it a couple of weeks to get the vastly more powerful Snapdragon 600 instead of going with the S4? It doesn't make much sense if Sony wants to remain competitive, but they keep doing it. The HTC One is coming out in the US in two weeks with a noticeably better screen, much more powerful internals, comparable camera (at least), and vastly superior speakers, as well as much more intriguing software and design.
Are you shitting me? The only disadvantage (if you can call that) compared to the HTC One is that is has worse viewing angles and slightly slower CPU. Other than that, the camera is great on paper, but the software sucks. Also, the Z is about the same size as the HTC One but has a bigger screen. It's a powerful handset and HTC One beeing better than Xperia Z isn't trivial.
- At peak performance yes, that means it'll drain your battery faster too.
- As for the IR Blaster, Xperia ZL has it but Z doesn't. In stead, Z has WiFi miracasting.
- Design wise, the Xperia Z is a premium phone, you can simply tell by the attention to detail. It has an all glas front and back. This was god tier design when iPhone 4 came out, why does it suddently feel cheap now? And mega lol at HTC beeing up to Apple standard build quility wise. HTC One X's coating sucked and so did the Windows Phone 8S and 8X'.
About the bolded and underlined part, only the CPU is slower on paper. The Xperia Z screen is amazing when you're looking at it from normal angles. The design is sublime and it's water/dust proof. The Xperia Z packs enough to able to compete. Oh and don't forget, the Xperia Z is 100 euro's cheaper than HTC One
At 1.9GHz, in the One they are running it at 1.7GHz, that is just a 20% improvement and it has worse battery life because of the IPC improvements, as can be seen by the poor battery life score.
99.9% of people don't care about specs, a few people on forums do. The only improvement worth having over S4 Pro right now is SD800 as it has better battery and it is 80% faster. SD600 is like Android 4.2 vs Android 4.1 for APQ8064, the difference is that small, and with the worse battery life the upgrade is more of a sideways move waiting until the main meal arrives SD800 (just like Android 5.0/KLP).
Qualcomm hasn't been entirely straightforward in terms of changes and upgrades in the Snapdragon 600. However, it is faster, we know that much. No reason to go with the S4 Pro now. And they specifically mention improved battery life on the Snapdragon 600.
You're right about average consumers caring about specs. Firstly , I AM speaking to people on this forum. Secondly, they're both going to get smoked by Samsung sales-wise again, due to a huge huge marketing campaign.
Seriously, I can tell you now for sure that the SD600 in the HTC One is about 20% faster in terms of the CPU than APQ8064, and this shows in the benchmarks. Every phone running SD600 so far has not had better battery life per 1000mAh than with APQ8064. SD600 is not a big upgrade and it was never intended to be, it is actually a pin compatible replacement for APQ8064, so all the phones currently using it will eventually cease to exist or switch over to SD600 in Q2/3 when stocks of APQ8064 runs out.
The battery life improvement you are thinking of is actually for the SD800 which has a shorter pipeline and has dynamic power gating for each of the four Krait cores depending on the usage scenario it can trickle the power down to so that only one of the cores is running at full power and the other three are off and the GPU (Adreno 330) is also going to be dynamically clocked. Neither of these power saving features are present in SD600, but it has IPC improvements which hurt battery life.
Also, the Xperia Z is out and is selling all over Europe and Asia, the HTC One is facing component shortages for it's chipset, screen, speaker coils and camera sensors. It's going to have shortages all the way until May/June by which time Samsung will have steamrolled them.
All of those people who have bought the Xperia Z already (which is a large number) won't get a GS4, but people who are waiting for the HTC One will see the GS4 on Thursday and possibly change their minds.
At some point you have to feature/spec lock and launch the thing. The market moves so fast that it is impossible to launch something without someone saying "why didn't they just wait a bit and add _______"
Also, I seriously doubt most of the market gives a shit about what processor is in their phone. Better to launch now when you have 3-6 months before the hype machine for the next iphone overwhelms the market.
there's a difference between waiting a few months and waiting a few days.
Except the GS4 only gets announced on Thursday, who knows when carriers will actually pick it up. There's a significant delay between the time a phone is announced and carriers offering it.
I dont know what verge are trying to say here? Specially the balded part?
so we dont need quad core processors for daily use but its not latest generation processor so marks are reduced
Then they are saying that Samsung extra lengthy animations are better than Sony animation and screen is not as responsive which i think is odd.
I also disagree with camera review the images may not be better than last year flagships but they are almost as good
Are Three having stock issues with the Xperia Z or something? I just got an email from them saying they had to change my delivery date from tomorrow to the 22nd
Yes, it's currently out of stock in many parts of Europe, demand is huge, Sony are having trouble keeping up with orders. They have got more on order, but it could take a couple of weeks to air freight them to Amsterdam/London.
For those concerned about viewing angles of the display, here is a video shot in a store that seems to show a better image quality than what the verge review would seem to imply
(warning, turn off the sound)
Nnn I still can't decide if I am going to pull the trigger on this later on in the week. It's annoying me that I can't make a decision.
It looks beautiful, but I'm more concerned how it runs. It looks a little bit more laggy / choppy when scrolling through things - but at the same time it looks good enough that I would be willing to forego that problem.
Jumping to an Xperia Z from an S3 - what are the potential things I might lose from an S3? Or is all the functionality well covered in the Xperia Z.
Nnn I still can't decide if I am going to pull the trigger on this later on in the week. It's annoying me that I can't make a decision.
It looks beautiful, but I'm more concerned how it runs. It looks a little bit more laggy / choppy when scrolling through things - but at the same time it looks good enough that I would be willing to forego that problem.
Jumping to an Xperia Z from an S3 - what are the potential things I might lose from an S3? Or is all the functionality well covered in the Xperia Z.
I'd tell you to go seek one out and spend a few minutes using one to make sure. And you're upgrading from an S3 already? How long have you had your S3?
It's almost all covered. I think the kill all function is missing, but with 2GB RAM flushing out apps is less of a concern. There is no multi-app view, but there are small apps.
On the scrolling, it's because Sony don't force GPU rendering by default, they leave it up to the end user, you can turn it on in the developer settings.
I really want this phone, but why is there still no word for a US release? This was my most hyped about phone coming into the year with its reveal at CES. With all the overseas coverage about the phone I was hoping there would be some info about a US release.
I'm ready to jump ship on to Android with this phone, but as time goes by newer flagship phones are showing up like the HTC One and the rumored Galaxy IV. The HTC One is looking very hot and if either of these new phones come out before the Sony's offering I might take one of those instead.
the ZL has one!Such a shame/z doesn't have dedicated camera button unlike my xperia t, i would have upgraded if so