Meet Sony Xperia XZ1 - More Than Just Gimmicks?

Sony is serious about retaking their place at the top with the recent announcement of the Xperia XZ1 for the Philippine market with an SRP of PHP 39,990!

Xperia XZ1!

The XZ from last year didn't get much buzz but with this years XZ1 Sony is banking the improvements made and the added benefit of technologies from their other electronics division like steady shot for cameras and the triluminos display from their TVs.

Powered by the 2.45 GHz 64 Bit Snapdragon 835 octa core processor, Adreno 540 and 4 GB of RAM means this phone is at the bleeding edge of performance and is line with most of the flagships with the RAM being less than the competition. In theory, this should be a good thing for battery life.

That said, there is a market for people who enjoy the benefits of a possible longer battery life and better still and video camera capabilities.

Meet Sony Xperia XZ1!

It is designed from the dated Xperia body design that was slightly updated. The textured metal body has a solid heft and weight to it that reassures us that this is build to last. It uses USB Type C with IP68 certification making this phone water and dust resistant.

SIM card and SD card tray

USB Type C port and mic below

Headphone jack and microphone

Volume rocker, fingerprint scanner on power button

It is equipped with a 5.2 Inch FHD HDR Triluminos 1920 x 1080 resolution w/ 2.5D curved glass and Gorilla Glass 5 protection at 424 ppi. It's sharp vivid and good viewing angles. If you notice one of the pictures near the window, the brightness of the phone is good enough to be visible in bright lit conditions.

It is running the latest 64 bit Snapdragon 835 with a just 1080p display and 4 GB of RAM makes this phone in theory very good with battery. This coupled with Sony's track record with the stamina modes on their phones a compelling options who need the long battery life that is hard to find these days.

It carries a 19 MP f/2.0 1/2.3 Inch Exmor RS w/ Motion Eye, Hybrid AF, SteadyShot, and dual tone LED flash main camera and a secondary 13 MP f/2.0 1/3.06 Inch Exmor RS sensor which if we were to rely on Sony's track record that their hardware will perform wonderfully.

It will now depend on thee software processing side to see if the camera will be the best on the market today.

The rest of the features

Sony Representative Performing the 3D Scan

It sports two features that most phones don't have and these are the 3D scanner and the 960 frames per second slow motion video recording.

During the launch, Sony prepared several booths that showcased these two new features. The Sony representative in collaboration with their lovely model did a face scan where the representative moved around the model while the XZ1 was taking pictures and scanning the model's face. After the scan, the phone created a 3D model of the face of the model and added it into a digital avatar. It's interesting but we have yet to see practical use for this.

The 960 frames per second slow motion recording sounds like a cool new feature but the surreal slow motion sequence lasts only for a few seconds. In short the phone only records slow motion for a very limited amount of time. Which is kind of disappointing.

The features of this device looks promising, but we wished those two unique features of the XZ1 will find real world practical use.

The specs are also a tad below some similarly priced handsets, but we'll see.

Stay tuned for our review!