Newsletter
With new flagship devices we as a society generally tend to expect all kinds of new flashy features and hardware upgrades, and while there is nothing wrong with wishing for those things, sometimes we forget that tons of newer features and hardware upgrades are not what makes the phone. What I’m getting at is the fact that Sony, despite having been nearly the same with their devices for the last few iterations(this includes the newly announced Xperia Z3 from this morning, as well as the Z2 and the Z1)they still have managed to put out great devices with at least some new features(meaningful ones at that)and even add in a couple new design tweaks.
It is true that the Sony Xperia Z3 looks very similar to the Z2 announced in January, but it’s better to look at the Xperia Z3 as more of a polished version of what the Xperia Z2 could have and should have been in the first place. Not that the Xperia Z2 was bad by any means, I just mean that Sony has done a nice job at fine tuning an already great phone and transforming it into something that is even more stunning. So what are some finer points about the Xperia Z3 that are improvements over the earlier model? Some will be not so obvious, and others have been noted in some of our earlier posts. We’ll go over some of them here in case you missed any of it.
We’ll kick things off with something obvious, and something near and dear to my own heart and an instant selling point for me personally. The Remote Play feature. This should be self explanatory for anyone that owns a Sony console(PS3 & PS4)but it’ll basically allow the user to connect their Xperia Z3 to their PS4 and play games using the Z3 screen instead of the TV or monitor that the PS4 is hooked up to. On top of this, Sony is making the controls part of the function as good as it gets by making games controlled using the PS4 controller. Gamers, need I say more? Past this, for the users that aren’t so much into games, the Xperia Z3 has a couple of newer or rather more refined camera features that will make for better images. The first is the wider camera lens. The lens on the Z3 is now 25mm wide which is an improvement over the Z2 and allows for your images to include more subjects and more details in every single shot. The camera is further improved by the increase in ISO photography capabilities, as the camera can now take shots with ISO all the way up to 12800, presumably giving the users a much improved low light image after the fact. Actual images in this condition have yet to be seen, but that will come in time.
While not likely a completely overlooked feature, most probably haven’t paid much attention to it. We’re talking about the IP waterproof/dustproof rating. Sony has upped their game, bringing this rating on the Xperia Z3 to an IP65/IP68 rating for superior waterproof capabilities compared to the IP58 on the previous model. Sony says this is the highest waterproof rating of any device, so we naturally can’t wait to test this out. The new Xperia Z3 is also using an updated Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 CPU(the 801 MSM8974-AC to be precise)which isn’t leaps and bounds over the Z2 but it is still faster. The phone is also lighter to hold, weighing in at just 152g compared to the Xperia Z2 which weighs 163g. These may be more minor and fine tuned details and improvements, but nonetheless they’re still improvements, and their actually improvements that matter. Are you happy with the Z3? Or were you hoping for more?