Sony Xperia Z1 Compact Review

The new Sony Xperia Z1 Compact is here to refute the theory that smartphones need to be bigger to be better. Phones such as LG G2, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and even the Sony Xperia Z1 show that there is an ultimate wish for bigger screen phones but such phones every so often are swayed by the absolute logistical issues of having an everyday phone that can no longer be used and held with one hand.

The Sony Xperia Z1 is a flagship phone that has been repackaged into a more compact form factor and it is aimed at those who want to avail the portability of the iPhone but would prefer the functionality of Google Android. It is a truly high end Android phone that comes in a compact body. This is something that many users have been seeking over and over again.

Now, we can happily say that with the Xperia Z1 Compact Sony came forward with exactly the kind of offer that we all have been yearning for so long. But this new offer arises a new question that we have to ask ourselves that whether we are ready to leave those 5” display phones that we now started to get used to, and start picking up this smaller phone? Well certainly, there is no substitute of the comfort this smaller phone brings but we do not have to necessarily compare the Xperia Z1 Compact with the popular Android flagship phones.

Another important function that this latest handset will be willing to perform is to compete with the iPhone 5s. And, this is not the way other Android flagship phones do rather it directly faces and fights for the same customers. This does not sound easy but somehow the Xperia Z1 Compact seems astonishingly fit for this chore. The reason of which is very simple because it has got both the looks and the heart of a winner.

Now, let’s see what the phone has to offer us.

The retail package of the Xperia Compact is very basic and you cannot call it rich in content. Here is a list of what you get when you unbox the phone:

• The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact
• An A/C Adapter
• A MicroUSB Cable
• User Guide & Manual

However, headphones are missing in the box which means you have to get them by your own. Further, you will also not get a microSD card either.

The phone features a glass and metal design which without any doubt is beautiful and stylish. Sony’s beautiful OmniBalance design in an appropriate form is presented in the Xperia Z1 Compact, and this is something that has been constantly true about Sony’s OmniBalance design, and that is, “symmetry in all directions”. The company defines it as “it looks better than it feels”. This beautiful OmniBalance design language was introduced last year with the Sony Xperia Z1 and from then this design language has promulgated all the way through Sony’s mobile portfolio. This design language has given the company’s products a stylish and elegant look, but bear in mind that it eventually comes at a cost. Succinctly, Sony’s OmniBalance design extremely appealing as far as Xperia Z1 Compact looks are concerned, but its massive footprint somehow make it a bit difficult to enjoy.

The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact is just the right size product to showcase the Sony’s premium design in its finest form. The Z1 Compact is a stunning mobile phone that comes with a high-quality construction – sufficient enough to easily beat most of the competition.

With a full frontal and back glass covered panel which is joined by a one piece metal frame running all around the handset gives the handset a very nice and clean feel.

The phone is available in four different colors which are black, white, pink and lime so that users can get what they like. Moreover, since the glass cover helps add to the industrial feel, it also requires little bit of effort if you want to keep the Xperia Z1 Compact looking its best. This is because the glass panels are easy to get covered in smudges. So, we would recommend using a case. Furthermore, since the glass does not offer the best of the grip, the Xperia Compact feels slippery in hand, but this should not be too big of an issue because you are far less likely to drop it as no stretching is required to operate the phone with one hand.

Talking about its physical keys, we can satisfactorily say that physical keys are well made. You would not face any trouble in this department. The power or lock key as well as the two step camera shutter react very well to the touch. The company included a dedicated camera key in the Xperia Compact – a feature that is growing out of the style nowadays.

Build quality is excellent it is as high as you would expect from its bigger brother the Xperia Z1, and therefore, we reckon it outplays the One mini and the iPhone 5c. The phone comes with its strengths that are incomparable. First and foremost, the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact is completely waterproof which suggests that it is an extremely durable handset. Thus, you do not have to worry if it accidently fell down in the swimming pool or even this phone can always outlast in a rainstorm. Secondly, because of its hypersensitive touchscreen mode, you can easily use it with hand gloves on.

In terms of dimensions, the phone measures in at 127 x 64.9 x 9.5 mm and weighs just 137g. The Z1 compact is slightly larger than an iPhone 5c and weighs slightly more. On the other hand, it is significantly smaller than many high end Android phones. With these dimensions, the phone is far more easier to operate with one hand only. Besides, as it takes less space it sits nicely in your pocket without making you feel uncomfortable when you want to sit down with the phone in your pocket.

The inclusion of IPS has made the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact company’s best mobile screen ever. By embracing this LCD technology, Sony made it easier to readapt to a 4.3” display panel. However, it is certain that staring at the Z1 Compact smaller screen for longer period of time will cause your eyes to tire quickly than doing so with a larger display, but this won’t happen unless you are a heavy user.

With 720 x 1280 screen resolution and 342 ppi, everything on the screen looks super clean and text is easily readable. On the other hand, since the company has embraced this phone with the IPS technology, it suggests that Sony’s high end phones will now no longer suffer from insufficient color vibrancy and poor viewing angles. We are delighted that Sony has finally integrated this must to have feature with its products.

The Xperia Compact brings in excellent contrast with impressively deep blacks in order to bring each and every image to life. On top of that, its color accuracy is above the par, and you will be more than delighted using this display. In addition, there is even a setting for manually tuning the white balance which is a great addition that enables you to adjust the white balance according to you.

The viewing angles are excellent as well. There's merely slight contrast shift when you go to extremes, but then again everything on the screen stays decipherable no matter how wide the tilt is.

The new Sony Xperia Compact runs on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean while its big sibling was launched with 4.2.2. Though, it won’t be much of an issue for larger phones, but for Z1 Compact, you will soon realize that it would have been far more better if the company update it to KitKat. The reason is its full screen apps that make this 4.3” display somewhat cluttered. However, you are able to remove the clutter of unnecessary apps and utilize the every mm this wonderful screen has to offer you.

The user interface is simple and easy to use and we have to admit that Sony’s Android experience is more than usable. There is a sense of consistency and coherence in its user interface which is added by its unified look across all the menus and apps. Furthermore, a number of bonus features are there that bring additional value to its user interface. The Xperia Compact user interface is the most comprehensive, more polished and custom user interface is for Android, though, it is not feature rich but it certainly is lively and pleasant to use.

The company has done an excellent job in creating an intuitive experience with its custom homescreen – that is very easy to get used to. You will also experience a very good use of pinch in gesture on homescreen, that is, it introduces the homescreen editing screen so that you can effortlessly add or delete homescreen pages, can also add different widgets and apps, can change themes and wallpaper as well. The multiple lockscreen panes contain one widget each. You can swipe to the rightmost pane to launch the camera. Since the widgets are collapsed by default, you can expand them by swiping down.

What is more, several widgets can be accommodated in homescreen panes such as Google Now, Calendar, Email, TrackID, Digital Clock, Google+ Posts and so on. Furthermore, Face, Pattern, PIN or Password unlock can also be enabled in ascending order of security.

The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact comes with a 720p display and a Snapdragon 800 chipset which results in a cutting edge performance. We can say that this small device is a true beast when it comes to performance, in spite of the fact that its size is not as impressive as that of the other high-end Android mobile phones, yet performance will never be an issue with the Xperia Z1 Compact. In addition, the whole system performance of the Z1 Compact is also excellent, which almost certainly is better than its big sibling i.e. the Z1. This is attributable to the lower screen resolution that there are no noticeable glitches or stoppages.

Moving on, the phone comes with a quad-core Krait 400 beast that can go up to 2.2 GHz, if needed. On top of that, the Adreno 330 GPU, with its outstanding processing power, is a praiseworthy escort when it comes to graphics. Hence, there will be no issues in this department as well. Run every game out there and enjoy!

Here again, the company make sure to not leave any stone unturned. The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact comes with a healthy 2 gigs of RAM which is sufficient enough to guarantee smooth performance without any glitches even when you have multiple heavy apps running in the background. Its internal storage capacity is 16 GB, but you can expand it with the help of a microSD card, if you need additional storage space.

The phone offers a complete set of connectivity with quad-band 2G and penta-band 3G connectivity across all regional models, and support for more LTE band. Plus, support for all the latest Wi-Fi protocols such as 802.11 a, b, g, n, n 5GHz, ac along with Bluetooth 4.0, internet tethering, NFC, MHL and DLNA.

Sony has not included its own Android browser which means that you have to use Chrome for web browsing. Chrome runs flawlessly on this device. Navigating around the web pages and loading is pretty much fast. Plus, scrolling and zooming are also very fluid and trouble free. The browser inflates text most accurately resulting in comfortable reading.

The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact is shipped with a 20.7 mega pixel camera having absolutely the same characteristics as that of the Z1. The camera uses the same custom-built Exmor RS sensor. This is a great technological achievement by Sony that it has successfully fit the same sensor in a considerably smaller body. By far now, it is the highest resolution available on an Android mobile phone. So, if you are more obsessed about taking pictures then this phone would be an ideal option for you.

To cut a long story short, the camera on Sony Xperia Z1 Compact is the same 20.7 mega pixel Sony Exmor RS Sensor as that you will find on its big sibling and therefore, its performance is also equally as extraordinary. Functionality wise, Sony has made using camera very easy. The camera boots from standby in around 2 seconds when you hold down the camera icon. Tones of options will welcome you once you get inside the camera app. When you first use the camera, it does not shoot in 20.7 MP rather it shoots at 8 MP and gives you the option of a 4x zoom without losing the quality of image.

Furthermore, by pressing the menu button present on the lower right hand side will launch a number of options ranging from Manual control to Info-Eye that lets you search the internet for the information about what is in the image. This is an interesting feature. On the whole, camera on the Z1 Compact is fantastic with a brilliant low light performance and of course, the 4x optical zoom which is more than useful.

Image quality is also very good. Images have very realistic, vivid and lively colors. Furthermore, the phone does not overwarm or oversaturate images in order to make them look prettier. Images have excellent details making them lively. Plus, they have great exposure. With the help of its excellent dynamic range, you can take photos in both the darker as well as lighter areas, and images in both scenarios turn out to be well. The LED flash also does its job pretty well in illuminating the small scenes.

With Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, you can also capture 1080p videos at 30fps. The video quality is also quite satisfactory. The camcorder user interface like the camera interface is pretty simple and easy to use. It allows you to set a timer as well as fiddle with settings such as exposure, focus mode, metering, etc.

Keeping in mind the background of Sony in media, we expect that the company should have produced a device which is more than capable when it comes to media playback. We expect a great music player, industry best media player and of course an intuitive way of looking through image gallery. Well, to that note, the Xperia Z1 Compact is fairly close in a number of these categories yet it has some drawbacks, but let’s begin with the positives.

First impressive thing to start with is its music player which is very well-equipped. The company is playing on its legacy in order to entice you over to its music playing app. The Walkman music player is cool and simple to get used to it. The Walkman app, in terms of pure music playback, is more than enough in furnishing all the mandatory controls in a visually appealing manner. The music player has some interesting features that add value to it. These include some sound enhancing tools such as ClearAudio+ for adding more clarity to the sound, and xLOUD, equalizer and several other custom options.

Video playback, because of its smaller screen, may not be an enjoyable experience for many of you. Though, the phone with its brilliant display that looks very good in all of its IPS glory provides satisfying experience in watching short videos. Although, it will not be that much comfortable to watch full length movies as it is on a 5” display. Furthermore, all the popular formats for video playback are supported. You can also download a capable third-party player from the Play Store if you find a video that is not playable with the stock player.

Image gallery also presents a nice and appealing way of showing your images as well as videos. With a fresh and consumer centric design of its image gallery, you will find it a fun to browse through your images and videos. Once you are inside the Album app, you will be greeted with several options to customize your images and videos.

The Sony Xperia Compact comes with a fantastic battery life. Despite the fact that because of its smaller size, the company has not been able to fit a very big battery inside, it gives considerably good talk time. The Xperia Z1 Compact comes with a 2300 mAh battery, whereas its big sibling was shipped with a 3000 mAh unit. The company claims that the device is able to provide 18 hours of continuous talk time on 3G and an impressive stand by time of 25 days in 3G and 22.9 days in 4G respectively.

We used the phone and noticed that with moderate use that includes music, messaging, emailing, and internet browsing, we were able to get through the day with 20 – 40% battery life. This means with a full charge, you can easily reach the end of the day without having to agitatedly plug in the phone by lunchtime.

Well, there is no point in prevaricating about this small flagship product. After all, this is something all the companies are trying to do all along. Well, the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact is the only option available in the market that caters the need of those who want the best top-specs Android phone without a finger stretching screen. The phone has a lot more thing to offer with its excellent 20.7 mega pixel camera which by far now is the highest resolution you will get in a mobile device, exceptional software, brilliant display, powerful processor and of course outstanding performance.

Sony has raise the standards for mini flagship smartphones with its strong build quality and robust performance, but all this come at a price. The Xperia Compact is more expensive than other mini phones available in the market, but it does worth every single penny.