The big reason for why you’d want to be an Xperia Z5 owner is the camera. I’m not going to waste time with any preamble: this is easily Sony’s best mobile camera and absolutely one of the best on any smartphone. The new camera has surprised me in different ways: from its ability to focus in low light, to its image stabilization ensuring steady shots, to the quality and detail of its final output. I’m discovering intricate details like the thinnest of spider webs — unnoticeable to the naked eye — when I zoom in on the full-size 23-megapixel photos. Sony defaults to capturing 8-megapixel stills in a 16:9 format, which use the full resolution of the imaging sensor to algorithmically improve the quality and cleanliness of the final, smaller image. Basically, shoot the lower resolution for the best possible quality or the full resolution for the most pixels.
Click here for the full-size sample imagesSony’s camera is supremely capable, but alas, its software is slow and unresponsive. Having a fast lens and fast autofocus doesn’t mean much when the camera app takes up to three seconds to load. Nor am I thrilled to have to wait two, three, sometimes even four seconds for the album app to let me review my photos. In the world of mobile technology, these delays are small, unforgivable eternities. I could easily see the Xperia Z5 Compact as the perfect tool for discreet photographers, combining high-powered imaging with unnoticeably small size. But when I’m stuttering around the place, waiting for my photos to show up to make sure I had the shot and framing I wanted, I find that dream unfortunately out of reach. I’m reminded of Nokia’s 808 PureView and Lumia cameraphones when using the Z5: excellent imaging, let down by sluggish software.
Sluggish software spoils the splendorSony was among the first companies to offer 4K video recording on its smartphones, so of course the Xperia Z5 and Z5 Compact support it. 4K is still not a must-have, however, and it’s not really the reason to want to record video with the Z5. As with the new iPhone 6S, video shot with the Xperia Z5 is attractive because of the camera’s underlying strengths — its optics and image sensor — and being able to record it in 4K is just a nice bonus. The odds are good that you’ll be on your next smartphone before you have enough 4K displays around your home to justify transitioning all your movie recording to the higher resolution (and larger file sizes).
You can’t really have a good mobile camera without a good display to pair it with, and Sony’s done a decent job with the Xperia Z5 displays. I say decent, because there are a couple of foibles that left me troubled. Firstly, a distracting color shift becomes apparent when tilting the phone in any direction. This is especially noticeable with white or light sections of an image and makes the screen feel inorganic. The other issue is one of inconsistency: the Xperia Z5 Compact has a cooler color balance, making everything appear slightly bluer than on the Z5. I’m not sure that either phone nails a perfectly neutral white, but am favoring the Compact’s cooler rendering at the moment. Still, I’d have prefered a consistent, and more importantly, accurate color reproduction across two devices intended to appeal to serious mobile photography lovers.
The displays could be better, but Sony's restraint helps extend battery lifeThe Xperia Z5’s display has significantly better viewing angles than the Compact’s, though both perform well in terms of contrast and saturation. The resolution of both phones strikes the right balance between image sharpness, which demands more pixels, and battery life, which prefers a lighter load on the processor. 1080p at 5.2 inches, as with the Z5 and many other smartphones in its class, is the sweet spot for most people, and I see no loss in clarity or detail when moving to the lower-resolution, but also smaller Xperia Z5 Compact. Its 4.6-inch display is one of the last remaining 720p panels on the market, but there’s good reason for its existence: it gets the job done.
The similarities between Sony’s two new phones are extended by what you see when you turn them on. The interface is identical, running atop Android 5.1, and looking at them side by side actually betrays just how little benefit there is to the larger phone’s display. Whether I’m on the home screen, or in Gmail, Twitter, Slack, or any other messaging client, I usually see just as much information on the Compact handset as I do on the bigger one. If text density were as high on the larger Xperia as it is on the smaller one, I’d be able to justify the flagship Z5’s size, but as things stand, I’d readily choose the Compact over its larger sibling. I very rarely find myself lacking anything when using the Compact, and when I do — such as wanting to watch a longer video or a movie — I’m inclined to move all the way up to a tablet like the Nexus 9 rather than to another phone.
The other significant advantage of the Xperia Z5 Compact is a familiar one: battery life. This smartphone lasts for amusingly, ridiculously long stretches of time. Two days on a single charge is the norm, not the exception, and that includes me doing battery-intensive things like finding my way in the dark with the Z5 Compact’s flashlight, streaming online radio through its speakers, and photographing random things at a 23-megapixel resolution. Instead of marketing fast or wireless charging, Sony just stuck a massive (for the phone’s size) 2,700mAh battery inside the Compact and challenged everyone to try and drain it. With a larger, higher-resolution display and only slightly bigger battery (2,900mAh), the Xperia Z5 obviously can’t keep up with its smaller sibling, but it also performs well. I was able to go a day and a half with the Z5 on a consistent basis, so Sony’s established leadership in terms of smartphone battery life remains a strength. The company’s Stamina mode — which acts like the new Doze feature in Android 6.0 Marshmallow — can also help extend the battery’s usefulness by disabling background processes and turning off network connections when the phone’s not in use.
For all their power, these phones are maddeningly slow and stutteryThe launch of Android 6.0 coincided almost perfectly with the retail availability of Sony’s Xperia Z5 devices, but when the two shall meet is anyone’s guess. Sony again finds itself in the unenviable position of shipping an Android flagship without the latest software, but given how mature the operating system is, that shouldn’t preclude a fast and enjoyable user experience. After all, I’d rather have an awesomely speedy Android 5.1 than a buggy and unpolished 6.0. Regrettably, Sony has combined the worst of both worlds, delivering sluggish responsiveness on software that should really be smooth as butter by now. Google literally had an initiative called Project Butter designed to address this very issue. And yet, years later, Sony is releasing flagship devices with stuttery animations, epic app-loading delays, and a general sense of friction where there should be smooth and fluid interactions.
Android is extremely flexible and customizable, and the old terror of awful phone manufacturer skins isn’t so scary with a diversity of theming utilities like Nova Launcher available. The look of Android can always be bent to your will. The performance, however, is another matter. Unless you are well versed in the dark arts of installing custom ROMs, your experience of an Android smartphone is left entirely up to the maker of that phone. And this is where Sony failed. I can’t sugar-coat it.
Sony is selling premium, top-tier devices, powering them with a chip famous for being so powerful that it overheats, and throwing all of its engineering might behind that project. It’s still hugely impressive to think that phones as thin and as elegant as the Xperia Z5s can be both waterproof and as long-lasting as they are. But the bow that needs to be tied at the end of it all is one of integration: making the software and hardware work together in harmony and delivering an experience inside the phone that’s as attractive as the aesthetics outside the phone.
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