- Sony Z5
4GB of RAM was rumoured but it remains
at 3GB and there's 32GB (21GB available on our sample) of internal storage plus a Micro-SD card slot which can accept up to 200GB more, according to Sony. It's good to see Sony sticking with expandable storage with so many devices (the OnePlus 2, iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6 to name just three) not having this feature.
The Xperia range has long touted good battery life and the Z5 is no different with Sony still claiming two days of usage. The still non-removable battery is 2900mAh in capacity which is oddly 30mAh lower than the Z3+. You'll be able to quick charge the phone getting five and half hours usage from a 10 minute charge – however, the QCH10 charger is not included in the box and will cost you £19 from Sony.
In our battery benchmark test using Geekbench 3, we recorded a time of five hours and 37 minutes with a score of 3376. This is respectable but just over an hour short of rivals like the Galaxy S6 which we didn't expect due to the lower resolution screen. We have found battery life to be good from a user point of view and should last most the advertised two days.
So what has changed? Well Sony is going big on two features: the new camera and the fingerprint sensor.
Sony admits that it's a bit late with a fingerprint sensor but it's managed to do something a bit different. Yes, it's inside a button like rivals but the firm has put it inside the power button. This is firstly impressive since it sits on the side and is really slim but also means it's a much more ergonomic placement – exactly where your thumb naturally falls when you pick up the phone so all you need to do is push the power button and the sensor reads your print at the same time. It's consistently quick and accurate.
SONY XPERIA Z5 REVIEW: CAMERA REVIEWo
Now onto the camera which is new for the first time since the Xperia Z1. The Xperia Z5 now boasts a 23Mp main camera (1/2.3in and f/2 aperture) with various improvements and features – it's the same camera on the Compactand Premium models, too.
Before we get to the bad news, we'd like to give Sony a nice round of applause for keeping the two-stage dedicated physical camera button on the side which not only launches the camera app whenever you need, but also makes taking photos easier and nicer.
Sony is touting three main improvements for the camera. It has the fastest autofocus according to the firm at 0.03 seconds thanks to a hybrid system, it also has x5 Clear Image Zoom which is meant to give better results when you zoom in on an object (or crop a photo) and it also provides the clearest low light performance.
However, we're unconvinced that the sensor really does have 23 million pixels. For one thing, Sony sets the camera to 8Mp by default so you'll have to head into the settings to switch to the full 23Mp compliment (this is a 4:3 aspect ratio). The second is that when you compare photos with rivals at 1:1, you see much more detail from those with 12- and 16Mp sensors, adding weight to the argument that it's really an 8Mp sensor that interpolates to 23Mp. Whichever is true, the photos speak for themselves.
Going back to what Sony says about the camera and that autofocus is incredibly fast. Perhaps not 0.03 seconds every time (that's pretty hard to measure) but it's one of the quickest we've ever seen and should help you to capture moments better when the window of opportunity is small. Focus is sometimes soft round the edge of photos.
The Clear Image Zoom feature seems to be nothing more than marketing hype as we've not found it to be at all effective. In fact, a photo taken at 'x5' compared to zooming in on a full-frame still is actually better. As usual, you'll want a camera with optical zoom if you want good results in this respec