Sony Xperia Z3+

If you want to invest €340 in good communications and excellent multimedia on the go for the next few years, then the Sony Xperia Z3+ is definitely the way to go. The Sony Xperia Z3+ might be pricey for some, but will prove its worth down the line especially if you travel abroad. Released in May 2015 its still and excellent phone.

Sony Xperia Z3+

If you thought the Xperia X Performance was in a class of its own then this phone will set you right. The phone also goes by the name of the Sony Xperia Z3 Plus, Xperia Z4 or as the Sony E6553. The Sony Xperia Z3+ covers all three network bands. The 2G band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) as well as the 3G band (HSDPA 850/900/1900/2100) and 4G (LTE band 1(2100), 2(1900), 3(1800), 4(1700/2100), 5(850), 7(2600), 8(900), 12(700), 17(700), 20(800), 28(700), 40(2300)). There is also GPRS up to 107 kbps as well as EDGE up to 296 kbps.

Much like the other Xperia phones the Z3+ is about the same size at 146 x 72 x 6.9 mm and weighing in a bit lighter at 144 grams. The phone also uses a nano-SIM and comes IP68 certified. This means that the phone is dust proof and water resistant to over 1.5 meter and 30 minutes. Like other high-end phones in the range this phone comes with an IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with the usual 16M colors. The screen is 5.2 inches (~70.9% screen-to-body ratio) which is a large screen and runs at a high resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels with an excellent pixel density of ~424 ppi which gives you a very sharp and detailed picture.

You can see the article on pixel density on this website and why it matters. The screen also has scratch-resistant glass as well as an oleophobic coating (no fingerprint marks) and comes with a triluminos display (3 colours wrapped in one) and there is also the X-Reality Engine which helps the graphics on the phone.

The hardware is a very capable Octa-core (4×1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×2.0 GHz Cortex-A57) which is a very powerful combination. This is based on the Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 chipset which is also an excellent chipset from Qualcomm. The GPU for graphics is the Adreno 430 GPU which is also a high-end GPU. The hardware on this phone is excellent. All of this powers the Android OS, v5.0.1 (Lollipop), v6.0.1 (Marshmallow), planned upgrade to v7.0 (Nougat) operating system.

The phone comes with large memory and space as well. The Z3+ comes with 32 GB of space and 3 GB RAM. If that is not enough there is also a dedicated slow for the microSD card. The microSD card microSD can add up to 256 GB on this dedicated slot. The camera is a 20.7 MP being a 25mm, autofocus camera with an LED flash. The camera is large being a 1/2.3″ sensor with 1.12 µm pixel size, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR as well as panorama. Compared to other cameras, it is a bit of a disappointment when it comes to fine details during high-resolution picture shots. The camera has a capable video ability at 2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps as well as 720p@120fps. With the sort of hardware on the phone these specs should be expected. The camera also has a very capable 5.1 MP secondary camera which can play video at 1080p@30fps. HD recording is possible with this mobile phone.

The phone has the usual options you find on a high-end mobile phone today such as vibration; MP3 and WAV ringtones as alerts. There is also a loudspeaker and it comes with stereo speakers, as well as a 3.5 mm headphone jack. Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic is also included. Wifi is in the form of Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA and hotspot. The Bluetooth options are v4.1, A2DP as well as aptX.

There is also NFC, A-GPS, GLONASS/ BDS (market dependant) as well as an FM radio and a microUSB v2.0 with (MHL 3 TV-out) and a USB Host ability. Sensors on the phone include an accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass as well as a barometer. There is no Java but it comes with an HTML5 browser as well as SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, IM as well as Push Email. Another advantage of this phone is fast battery charging: 60% in 30 min (Quick Charge 2.0) and also ANT+ support. All of this is supported by a non-removable Li-Ion 2930 mAh battery with a standby time of up to 580 h (2G) and talk time of 16 hours. Overall and excellent well balanced phone but it needs improvements in the phone design as heating issues have been raised because of the powerful processor when run at max for a long period of time.