Sony’s new flagship is coming to town, and we’re really pumped about it
Sony’s latest flagship, the Xperia Z3, will be officially launched on the 14th, and suffice to say, we’re excited (if this is the first time you’ve heard of the Xperia Z3, read the official announcement of Sony in IFA here). While some people may not like Sony’s strategy of releasing a new flagship every six months, we actually don’t mind because it allows the company to introduce new features and innovations quickly that you would otherwise be waiting for a year for to show up in other devices. What exactly are we pumped up for the Xperia Z3? Well…
1. Higher water resistance rating
The has an IP65/IP68 ingress protection rating, which is up from the Z2’s IP58. Higher IP ratings mean that a smartphone can spend time submerged in deeper water – in the Xperia Z3’s case, Sony guarantees that the Xperia Z3 when properly sealed can survive depths of up to 1.5 meters for around 30 minutes without anything happening to the Xperia Z3. Of course, we’ve seen the Xperia Z2 survive longer than Sony’s estimate, which is probably also true with the Xperia Z3.
2. Better battery life
The early reviews of the Xperia Z3 sing praises about its astounding battery life, with some reviewers managing almost two days on a single charge. This is pretty surprising, considering that the Xperia Z3 has a slightly smaller 3100mAh battery compared to the 3200mAh on the Z2. We’re not sure what Sony’s been doing with their batteries and their screens, but we’re liking the results so far.
3. Faster performance
It’s kind of obvious that the Xperia Z3 will bring faster performance since that’s usually what happens with new flagships, but we’re still pumped about it anyway. For reference, the Xperia Z2 came with a Qualcomm Snapdragon Qualcomm MSM8974AB Snapdragon 801 processor running at 2.3Ghz, while the one in the Z3 will be Qualcomm MSM8974AC Snapdragon 801 running at a faster 2.5GHz. It’s not much of an upgrade on paper, but Sony might have put in some optimizations in there, much like how the battery of the Z3 is better compared to the Z2.
4. Better color options
This might be a little shallow, but we’re still pretty excited for it nonetheless – the Xperia Z3 now has better color options compared to the Z2, which only received white, black and a horrid shade of purple. The Xperia Z3 will now come in the
standard black and white, along with green and copper. Now we’re not entirely sold on the shade of green that Sony’s going to be using, but the copper one looks pretty good according to people who have already seen the device in person.
5. Tweaked design, slimmer body
The Xperia series of devices adhere to Sony’s OmniBalance design mantra and because of that you can’t expect drastic design changes for the Z3. What Sony did was slightly tweak the design of the new flagship by adding corners made out of nylon, and making the device thinner (7.3mm compared to 8.2mm) to make the device easier to hold in the hands.
Another feature of the Xperia Z3 that we were excited for until we found out that it wasn’t working as of press time was the PS4 Remote play function, which basically allowed you to Play PS4 games on your phone as long as you were on the same Wi-Fi network. Alas, this feature isn’t functional yet according to several reviewers who got the device early.
So, there you have it. We’ll be eagerly anticipating Sony’s new flagship and will be putting it through its paces once we get it.
