A beast in most ways. Review on Sony Xperia Z5 Premium

I have been using the xperia z(c6602) since its launch I was happy with the phone although disappointed with its camera, the phone would heat up at times but it did not affect me.

Couple of years later I needed to replace the xperia z, I am not someone that changes phones to often unless something pleases me and makes me want to buy it. The xperia z had been through alot, dropped a tonne of times and still kept going till a few days back when its vibrator stopped functioning and for me a person who keeps the phone in silent always this was very important.

I am a photographer and to me being on the field for hours means I need a phone that has enough battery life to last me, I dont mind carrying a power bank but hey it should atleast give me a decent if not good back up, my previous xperia z would last me about 15-20 hours on stamina mode and about 4-5 hours of screen on time. I needed a phone with a good display since I do transfer files from my cam over wifi to edit in snapseed and vsco cam this does not happen always but when it does a good display is everything to me. A good camera would be an added benefit. Using alot of apple products I wanted an iphone 6s but having been on android I had second thoughts of migrating to another system, mobile photography is popular with alot of iphone users and we can see alot of great work by them.

it was a tough choice the market is filled with alot of new brands that offer more for less but I was not keen on going for them, I knew nothing of their reliability.

Amoled displays are not a good thing for me as in my opinion I found that they saturate colors which can be a bad thing for me, causing me to under-saturate pictures.

At the end I had two options to go back with a sony or shift to an iphone 6s.

I went over to a multi brand store that had the iphone 6s and the xperia z5 and z5 premium and loaded with some images I shot and edited I transferred them to the three phones and did a side by side comparison. the z5 looked good but the z5 premium with the 4k display made it look way better, the iphone had great natural colors but somewhere I found the z5 premium to look better especially with its deep blacks and good contrasts and on a 4k display made every detail visible. Now a camera try between the two the iphone excelled in having detailed images the z5 was not far behind, the iphone had great imaging softwares available, but this was not my major point of buying, also the ui was just as the xperia z I have and this made things easier.

I then hopped into a sony store to make the purchase, The difference between sony store and online stores was 1000 bucks at the most, and I could trust buying their phone from their own stores. I selected the chrome version since it looked premium and stylish at the same time. On boot up I noticed the phone is rather quick(im not a person that cares much of what hardware is on a phone like processor etc im more bothered of how it performs when I use it) but there was a catch I could not use my micro sim card and had to visit Vodafone for a nano sim card. Got the phone set up and updated softwares which needed updates and it was up and running. I used the phone for about 3 hours with its factory charge of 40% and kept browsing the camera interface and various modes. Post that I hooked it up to charge, the phone comes supplied with a sony quick charger but it felt slower than my 2400mah capdase, on investigating I noticed the charge rate depends on various parameters like temperature among other things and since the phone was still updating softwares it was getting hot. I was annoyed and then read up that the sd810 chip is known for heat issues, I started to regret the purchase. But then the updates were over and done and the phone did not feel hot any more rather warm around 35-37c and the phone started charging quick.

In the meanwhile I transferred some music via sony bridge for mac and played a few and was amazed by the audio output as well as quality, the phone has stereo speakers and if u hold it in landscaped mode you do enjoy the effects, its like the vocals and a few instruments come from under the screen but theres no speakers there. I then transferred a movie and activated virtual surround and was blown away. I did not buy the phone to listen to music or watch movies but now I will do that, the supplied headset is pretty average to my liking and seems okayish quality. I have my beats in ear which will suffice well.

I then went out to test the camera and was blown away, for a small sensor the bokehs were pretty good not the best but still good from a mobile device and low light was noise free( I use full frame cameras with 1.4 aperture lenses and shoot alot of night landscapes) this was worth the price, the images had a good amount of details and balanced highlights and shadows tho some scenes it blows out the highlights, I wished the was a true manual mode where I could adjust the shutters. Iso goes upto 3200 but 800 iso is fairly noise free unless you pixel peep. 4k video is great but does heat the phone up, makes perfect for shooting some small movies to edit and play on my 4k tv, a great feature is the camera button half press focuses your subject and full press clicks the image.

the display tho is gorgeous performs well in daylight and has crisp blacks and natural colors and a really good white balance that you need not calibrate.

On my first charge I managed about 6hrs 20 minutes of screen on time and on my second charge I manages some 7hrs odd screen on time with 14 hrs since unplugged. Both times I surfed the net used location services whatsapp mails and about an hour of youtube and 15 mins of gaming all with stamina mode activated.

Performance wise I have found no lags besides whatsapp crashing twice. Web browsing is lag free even when browsing pages with a lot of high res images.

now to summarize.

The good:

• Impressive display(4k only works in album and videos, the screen is full hd 1080p otherwise to save battery)

  
  




• Amazing battery performance

  
  




• Does not heat up

  
  




• Non laggy performance

  
  




• Camera has potentials provided you experiement and do your best.

  
  




• Great low light performance

  
  




• Amazing speakers.

  
  




• Finger print sensor works well

  
  




• Looks amazing

  
  




• Fast charge times

  
  




• water proof to an extent

  
  

The bad

• body is glossy and can slide of your hand.

  
  




• Camera lacks raw support and OIS and also a full manual mode.

  
  




• Sony is slow with updates.

  
  




• Not a good set of headphones considering the price of the phone and the phone being advertised for having the best sound namely hi-res.

  
  




• Too much bloatware.

  
  

Attaching a couple of images shot with the phones camera(the image with perfume bottle had noise added in post processing, the cake image has minute edits)