Sony Xperia Z3 Price Specification Features Review Camera Battery

CONNAUGHT PLACE, India - Sept. 26, 2014 - PRLog -- The company is back with the Xperia Z3 Compact, as it aims to take the experience to the next level coinciding with the release of its new flagship, Xperia Z3. We've been using the phone for a couple of weeks and will help you in deciding if it's a good buy.

Build & design

In terms of design, Sony Xperia Z3 Compact is loyal to the company's OmniBalance' design philosophy which is minimalist, yet premium. The phone looks very similar to the Z1 Compact but is almost 1mm slimmer and weighs less (129gram vs 137gram). A major change visible change is that the phone's frame is covered with translucent, silicon material. Just like the Xperia Z1 Compact, the Z3 Compact's frame is also made of metal but the silicon material hides it and gives the phone a softer feel. The edges as well as corners are rounded.

Xperia Z3 Compact also features a glass panel at the back, just like some other premium Xperia phones. We found Sony Z3 Compact's back prone to smudges and even scratches so you'd be better off with a protective guard or cover.

The Xperia Z3 Compact has a water and dust-resistant body (IP65 and IP68). Sony says that the phone can be kept under 1.5m of fresh water for up to 30 minutes. Sony has used protective flaps over all ports (barring the headphone jack) to achieve this. Some users may find it cumbersome, but the flaps offer a big utility.

The 3.5mm headset jack is placed at the top on the Xperia Z3 Compact, while the micro-USB and microSD card ports are placed at the left edge under a flap.Another flap on the same edge hides the nano-sim card slot. It also features a dock connector.

The typical watch crown-shaped, metallic power button is at the right edge along with the volume rocker key. The keys offer good tactile feedback although the volume rocker key could have been a little longer. Sony Z3 Compact sports a hardware button for the camera and is also located at the right edge. The 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.

The front of the phone is dominated by its 4.6-inch display. It's interesting to see how Sony has managed to fit in a slightly bigger display and has still managed to retain the dimensions of the Xperia Z1 Compact. The Z3 Compact also comes with two front-facing speaker outlets. Thankfully, these are very subtle and you may not even realise that they're present till you look carefully. The screen is slightly prone to smudges.

Barring the smudge prone front and back panels, Sony Xperia Z3 Compact exudes a premium feel and is also good to hold and use. The phone is available in red, green, black and white colour options.

Display

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact sports a 4.6-inch TRILUMINOS display with a resolution of 720x1280p and pixel density of 320ppi.

While the phone doesn't sport a full-HD display, the bright and vivid panel makes up for it. We would have to say the Z3 Compact's display is a delight to look at with its extremely wide viewing angles, optimum brightness levels, and almost perfect colour rendering.

Text and graphics look really crisp and sharp and outdoor legibility was also good. It won't be wrong to say that the Z3 Compact's display is one of the best among the ones we've seen.

Software

Xperia Z3 Compact runs Android 4.4 KitKat. Sony has skinned the user interface and has added its own apps for music, videos and gallery. The Indian edition of the phone also comes with additional content stores for downloading music and streaming TV shows.

Xperia Z3 Compact also has a separate Games Store and What's New apps, which show curated content (such as apps, music, games) that users can buy.

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 and look good. The transition effects visible during launching and minimising apps are also pleasant to look at.

Xperia Z3 Compact features Sony's Xperia keyboard which offers a fast typing experience and even offers a Swype-like mode for entering words by sliding fingers across keys. We found the typing experience to be swift and intuitive.

The app switcher button also gives access to 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.

While small apps are useful on large screens, they make the screen look crowded on small screen phones like the Z3 Compact. It's good that Sony still offers an option to users.

We'll have to say that we found Sony's UI skin less intrusive and well-balanced. It is among our favourite Android skins.

Camera

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact sports the same 20.7MP rear camera with Sony's G lens that the company offers on the Z3. While the megapixel count remains almost the same as that of Xperia Z1 Compact, the camera module has been enhanced. Sony has increased the maximum ISO sensitivity setting from 6400 to 12,800 for enhanced low-light images. The phone also has a new wide-angle, 25mm camera lens to capture more area.

The camera app offers a plethora of settings in addition to Sony's Superior Auto mode that chooses the best settings as per the ambient light.

We recommend the Superior auto mode for taking pictures unless you want to control granular settings. In that case, you can use the Manual mode.

You also get different scene options and the ability to switch the resolution of the pictures. Scene modes also include night mode, anti-motion blur, high sensitivity and backlight correction HDR, among others.

The other modes that the app offers include Timeshift burst, Timeshift video, Sound Photo, Multi-camera, Sweep Panorama, AR Effect, Creative effect, Background defocus, Face in, Social Live and Picture Effect. The time shift video helps you create time-lapse videos while background defocus lets you take DSLR-like bokeh pictures with defocussed background. The Multi-camera mode lets you hook other Xperia devices (phones or tablets) or a Sony Wi-Fi/NFC camera and record the same scene with multiple cameras.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact takes great pictures in daylight and good quality noisy pictures in low-light conditions. The Superior Auto mode has improved and is more consistent when it comes to focusing but low-light pictures still look over processed because of the noise reduction. By default, photos are taken in 8MP resolution.

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