Are you truly Xperia?

WAKE UP and get clicking with your dream smartphone, the Xperia Z5 Premium – the new flagship in Sony’s Z5 line. The display is amazing and the pictures it produces rival anything coming out of a compact camera.

The Z5 Premium is similar in specifications to the Xperia Z5, the quality of which I already found impressive enough when I ran it through the tests last year. But it’s got extra features that make a world of difference – including a larger and higher-definition display and a larger battery to power it.

It’s the display resolution that makes the Premium really outstanding. The 5.5-inch Triluminos IPS Display offers 4K Ultra HD resolution of 3,840 pixels horizontally by 2,160 pixels vertically. Compare that to the typical Z5 5.2-inch display at 1,920x1,080 resolution.

According to a survey in September by Strategy Analytics’ SpecTrax Service, the Z5 Premium is the first smartphone with a 4K display, and that’s what makes the pictures and videos look so crisp. You get more than double the number of pixels per inch than most smartphones and 10 times more than that of a Full HD TV. We’re talking about an ultra-sharp 806ppi.

Best of all, the display packs auto-upscaling technology, which, with X-Reality for mobile and Dynamic Contrast Enhancer, ensures that the screen always looks as clear as can be.

The Premium comes with a 3,430mAh rechargeable battery, a big jump from the 2,900mAh unit in the basic Z5, plus Battery Stamina mode to keep the phone running for up to two days after full charging. If you pay an extra Bt990 for a UCH 10 charger, you can also tap into Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 technology. With just a single 10-minute charge, the Z5 Premium can last five and a half hours.

Whereas the ordinary Z5 has a frosted-glass finish at the back, the Premium boasts a stunning mirror effect. Housed in a metal frame of 154.4x76x7.8mm and 181 grams in weight, it’s available in chrome, black or gold and is precision-etched with the Xperia mark, a nice touch. I was knocked out by the shiny black model loaned to me to test.

Like the basic Z5, the Premium gets its startling performance from a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 64-bit octa-core processor running at 2GHz and 1.56GHz and an Adreno 430 graphic-processing unit. For games and other demanding applications, a quad-core ARM Cortex A57 at 2GHz kicks in, and for general apps there’s a quad-core A53 at 1.56GHz.

Three gigabytes of working memory allow for smooth multitasking, and the 32GB of internal storage is expandable with a microSD card, up to 200GB.

The Z5 Premium runs on Google Android 5.1 and supports LTE 4G connections. I tested it on TrueMove H’s LTE network and found that downloading and installing apps, backing up photos to my Microsoft OneDrive account and posting them on Facebook was very fast. While I was in Chumphon recently I ran an Ookla speed-test app and measured downloading at 60.6Mbps and uploading at about 21Mbps.

The touch-screen and menus are very responsive and video clips play smoothly, and you can play full high-resolution FLAC 24bit 192kHz music tracks without hiccups. You can also stream music using Sony’s LDAC codec, which is optimised for above-CD sound quality, which means high-resolution music coming in wirelessly at samplings of up to 96kHz/24bit. I ran it through Sony’s MDR-1ABT headphones and appreciated the terrific quality. 

The Z5 Premium music app comes with a DSEE HX function that upgrades the audio quality of MP3 and AAC tracks to near high-res, making the phone a great Walkman player. An MDR-NC750 high-resolution audio headset with built-in digital noise-cancelling is an option at another Bt2,990.

Like the ordinary Z5, the Premium comes with excellent cameras, enhanced by Sony’s big new Exmor RS mobile sensor, with 23-megapixel resolution. The rear-illuminated 1/2.3-inch sensor is actually the same size as the image sensor found on most compact digital cameras. Sony’s mobile sensor is famed for its quality and has been adopted by many brands of mobile phones, including Meizu’s MX5.

The main camera uses an f/2.0 G lens and Clear Image Zoom to enable five-time zooms without quality loss. Hybrid Autofocus gets the scene – even a moving subject – in focus in 0.03 seconds, using contrast and phase detection. And Touch Capture lets you focus and shoot by tapping anywhere on the screen. The Exmor RS CMOS sensor is highly sensitive, so you get sharp photos even in low light. 

While the screen is still locked, you can press and hold the camera key on the right side of the body to activate the camera. Use the key to take photos with one hand and minimise shake (since you’re not touching the screen), and use the volume keys to zoom in and out.

For selfies, the front camera has a 25mm wide-angle lens, so you can crowd all your friends into the shot.

Among the shooting modes is Superior Auto, as found on Sony digital cameras. It guarantees sharp pictures in most lighting conditions, automatically selecting the best scene mode for the given situation. Night-time pictures grab the surrounding lights dramatically.

Other shooting modes include Manual, Creative Effect, Sweep Panorama and Sticker Creator. In Manual, you select your own scene modes – Soft Skin, Landscape, Backlight Correction HDR, Hand-held Twilight, High Sensitivity, Pet, Party, Sports or Fireworks.

Creative Effect is fun as always, with Mirror, Old Film, Motion Effects, Motion Trail, Vivid, Fisheye, Colour Sketch, Pencil Sketch and Harris Shutter. Harris Shutter produces images that are wildly colourful, almost psychedelic. Other effects are available for download, like Perfectly Clear, Time Lapse, Horizon, Vine and AudioSnap.

The main camera is also capable of shooting 4K video clips.

While trying out the phone cameras at the Bua Dara Resort in Chumphon, I managed to capture night scenes with beautiful lights and clarity. Later, at Ratchaprapha Dam in Surat Thani, I got all the gorgeous green hues of the mountain and azure of the water against a glorious blue sky.

The Z5 Premium has a fingerprint scanner cleverly embedded in the power button, about midway down the right edge, convenient for the right thumb when the phone’s in your right hand. 

To set it up, just place your thumb over top several times to be scanned, moving slightly to the right and left so a full reference image is achieved. You also need to input a numerical or alphabet password in case the thumb scan subsequently fails, but I had no such problem.

The Premium is water- and dust-resistant in accordance with IP68 standards, which means it will survive splashes but shouldn’t be dunked, even though Sony says it can dive 1.5 metres for up to 30 minutes.

You get various time-saving smart apps and other features. Smart Connect, for example, lets you set in advance what happens when you connect or disconnect an accessory – maybe you want the FM radio app to start automatically every time you connect a headset. Smart Connect will also read aloud any incoming text messages. 

For exercise buffs, the Z5 Premium becomes a fitness hub with its ANT+ feature. While running with an ANT+-compatible heart-rate monitor and a foot pod to measure pace and distance, for instance, the Premium will collect all the data. You can download a range of applications from Google Play that work with ANT+ sport, fitness and health devices.

Another very nice app on the phone is Lifelog, which automatically records daily events. You can set goals and track your progress towards them, or you can bookmark special moments with short voice recordings.

 I had Lifelog keeping track of my footsteps, distance travelled by vehicle and distance cycled each day and calculating the calories I was burning. It also counted the photos I took each day and what apps I used. Lifelog can do all this thanks to the phone’s vast array of sensors, including step counter, step detector and motion detector.

The Sony Xperia Z5 Premium retails for Bt27,990.

 

Key Specs

 

- Networks: GSM:850/900/1800/ 1900MHz; 3G UMTS HSPA+ 850/900/1900/2100MHz; 4G LTE 700/800/850/900/1700/1800/1900/2100/2300/2600Mhz

- Operating system: Google Android 5.1

- CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (MSM8994) 64-bit Octa Core processor 2GHz, 1.56GHz 

- GPU: Adreno 430

- Memory: 3GB

- Storage: 32GB, expandable to 200GB

- SIM: Single nano 

- Display: 5.5-inch 4K UHD Triluminos for Mobile with 3840x2160-pixel resolution in 806PPI

- Main camera: 1/2.3-inch 23MP Exmor RS for mobile sensor with wide-angle G Lens (24mm) 5 x Clear Image Zoom, ISO 12800 Photo / 3200 Video, SteadyShot

- Front camera: 5MP Exmor R for mobile sensor with wide-angle lens (25mm)

- Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.1, Wi-Fi MIMO, NFC, ANT+

- Sensors: Fingerprint scanner, accelerometer game rotation vector, step counter, step detector, motion detector, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, barometer, eCompass, geomagnetic rotation vector, gyroscope, magnetometer

- Sound: High-resolution audio (LPCM, FLAC, ALAC, DSD)

- Durability: Water and dust-resistant

- Battery: 3,430mAh, good for up to two days, supporting QC2.0

- Dimensions: 154.4x76x7.8mm

- Weight: 181 grams