Almost nine months after launching the Xperia Z3 in India, Sony is back with a new high-end smartphone.
Christened as the Xperia Z3+, the company has priced its new flagship phone at a steep Rs 55,990. The smartphone essentially retains the same design, look and feel as that of the Xperia Z3 and brings in some under-the-hood changes.
Build and design
At first glance, the Xperia Z3 and Z3+ are hard to tell apart as the two sport identical design and almost the same chasis, employing the use of similar materials. The phone comes in black, white, copper and aqua green colours.
The micro-USB port is no longer hidden under a flap (and is now at the bottom edge) though the Z3+ is also a water-and dust-resistant phone, and the microSD+nano-sim card slot has been moved to the left edge under a water- resistant flap. The 3.5mm headset jack is placed at the top while the typical watch crown-shaped, metallic power button is at the right edge along with the volume rocker key and a hardware button for the camera. The keys offer decent tactile feedback and the camera key offers two-stage press similar to camera shutter keys to allow users to focus with soft press and shoot by pressing the key further.
Display
The Sony Xperia Z3+ is dominated by a 5.2-inch full-HD (1920x1080p) IPS display with Sony's TRILUMINOS technology and X-Reality for mobile. It also comes with adaptive brightness to increase the intensity of backlight depending on ambient light. The panel is also protected by tempered glass so it's sturdy compared to others and has an anti-fingerprint coating. It's not clearif Sony has used Gorilla Glass protection. Sony also ships the phone with a screen protector.
However, we have to say it's not as crisp and sharp as the 2K panels we've seen on the LG G4 and HTC One M9+. We're slightly disappointed that Sony did not use a QHD display with the Xperia Z3+.
Software
In terms of software experience, the Xperia Z3+ comes with Android 5.0(Lollipop) out of the box with Sony's
own UI and apps for music, videos and gallery. Sony's UI skin is not very heavy and doesn't hog on system resources. The experience of navigating across the UI was very smooth.
The UI elements, including the notifications tray, app launcher and settings menu have been skinned but also borrow elements from the new Android 5.0 UI. System apps feature Material Design with a blue theme being Omani present. The transition effects visible during launching and minimizing apps are also pleasant to look at. The app-switcher is also borrowed from Android 5.0 Lollipop but features the launcher for small apps which can float on top of other running apps. The phone ships with some small apps,including a browser, timer,calculator and screen grabber. One can download additional small apps from the Play Store, or even turn a widget into a small app.
Camera
Sony Xperia Z3+ comes with the same 20.7MP rear camera that we've seen on the Xperia Z3. However, the phone has a 25mm wide-angle 5.1MP front camera for better selfies, compared to the 2.2MP front camera of Xperia Z3. The front facing snapper now comes with superior auto mode for selfies.
Xperia Z3+ takes great pictures in daylight and good quality noisy pictures in low-light conditions. The Superior Auto mode is more consistent when it comes to focusing but low-light pictures still look over processed because of the over zealous noise reduction. By default,photos are taken in 8MP resolution in this mode.
Pictures show accurate colours, great amount of detail, balanced contrast and white balance skewed slightly toward swarmer tones .
Performance
Among the major improvements of Xperia Z3+ over its processor is the 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor (four 1.5GHz cores + four 2GHz cores). It retains the 3GB RAM but unlike Xperia Z3, which was offered in 16 and 32GB storage options, the new Sony smartphone comes in only 32GB capacity. It also offers a microSD cardslot that supports cards of up to 128GB capacity.Verdict
At Rs 55,990, the Sony Xperia Z3+ is at best an incremental update to the Xperia Z3 and one of the most expensive flagship smartphones available in the market. While the phone's optics and ruggedised construction are its differentiating propositions, the fact that it doesn't sport a new design and retains the same full-HD panel go a gainst it, especially when other flagships are offering better features at lower price points. Perhaps, this is just a stop-gap device prior to the arrival of Sony's next flagship device. The 'plus'suffix does seem to indicate that.
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