Sony Xperia Z2

Sony’s six-month release cycle seems to have slowed down now that it’s reached the Xperia Z3, but Sony’s latest flagship smartphone shares many similarities with its predecessor, the Xperia Z2. This is great news for anyone looking for a slightly cheaper Xperia Z phone, as the Z2 has the same aluminium frame, rear glass panel, waterproof chassis and 20.7-megapixel camera as Sony’s latest handset, making it better value than its expensive cousin.

While we prefer the smoother, more rounded design of the Z3 to the Z2, the Z2 still has plenty of merits. Sony’s just confirmed it will be receiving an upgrade to Android 5.0 Lollipop as well, so you won’t miss out on Google’s latest operating system by opting for a slightly older handset.

The phone’s sharp, angular edges aren’t quite as pleasant to hold as other Sony phones such as the more rounded Xperia SP, but we were still able to use the Z2 comfortably in one hand without too much trouble. It’s once you’re holding the Z2 that the differences start to become more noticeable, as the phone is both lighter and slimmer than its predecessor, measuring a mere 8.2mm thick and weighing 163g.

It’s not too dissimilar from the Z1, but when you consider the Z2 has a larger 5.2in screen and a huge 3,200mAh battery packed inside its tiny chassis (the Galaxy S5’s battery is only 2,800mAh by comparison), it’s a pretty remarkable feat of engineering.

Sony Xperia Z2 performance

Android 4.4.2 KitKat runs beautifully on the Z2’s 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor. Menu animations are lightning fast and swiping between home screen menus is quick and responsive. We particularly like what Sony’s done with its default background animation, as its multi-coloured ribbon will keep twirling and twisting as you swipe from one screen to another.

The Z2 wasn’t quite as fast in our SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks as we were expecting, though, as it only scored 862ms when using the phone’s default Chrome browser. This is 200ms slower than the HTC One (m8), and almost 500ms behind the Samsung Galaxy S5. Even the Z1 was faster than we benchmarked it a year ago, scoring 740ms in Chrome. We weren’t able to improve the Z2’s score using other browsers either, as it only managed 1,021ms when we re-ran the test in the Dolphin browser.

This was disappointing, as we would have expected the Z2 to be at least a bit quicker than the Z1, if not as fast as the One (m8) considering both the Z2 and (m8) use the same processor. Fortunately, we found it didn’t really make too much of a difference in day to day use. Websites loaded quickly and it was able to handle image-heavy sites such as The Guardian with ease.

Where the Z2 really excelled was graphics performance. Its Adreno 330 GPU maxed out both our 3DMark Ice Storm and Ice Storm Extreme tests easily and it scored a huge 18,385 in Ice Storm Unlimited, which translates to a blistering average of 75.3fps. This is more than enough to run anything in the Google Play Store, and we saw great results in games such as Real Racing 3 as well. The phone was immediately able to run the game on the highest quality settings without any judder in the frame rate.

This is easily on par with both the Galaxy S5 and One (m8), but we think the Z2 has the edge when it comes to playing games, as it not only comes with Sony’s PlayStation Mobile app, which lets you play games from the Sony Entertainment Network, but it also has support for Sony’s Dualshock 3 controller, so you can use a wireless PS3 controller with the phone.

Sony Xperia Z2 display

The Z2’s 5.2in IPS screen is a fraction larger than the Z1, but it’s kept the same 1,920×1,080 resolution. This means its overall pixel density will be lower, measuring 423 pixels per inch (PPI) compared to the Z1’s PPI of 440, but text and images still looked incredibly sharp during everyday web browsing. We were able to read headlines on the desktop version of BBC News with no trouble at all, and the Z2’s IPS panel meant we could see the screen clearly from almost any angle.

Image quality was good, but not exceptional compared to other flagship AMOLED screens. Our colour calibrator showed the Z2 was displaying an impressive 98.7 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut, but colours didn’t look quite as rich and vibrant when we compared it side by side with the Nokia Lumia 1020‘s AMOLED screen. Whites were a little cleaner, but blacks were noticeably greyer, which reflected our black level reading of 0.31cd/m2. AMOLED panels, on the other hand, often measure near a perfect zero. It’s by no means a bad screen, though, and it’s still perfectly bright enough to see on a sunny day thanks to its peak brightness reading of 386.28cd/m2.

Sony Xperia Z2 camera

For the rear camera, Sony has decided to stick with the same 1/2.3in 20.7-megapixel Exmor RS camera it used on the Z1, but it’s included a few key differences to make it stand out. The most important is the inclusion of SteadyShot image stabilisation, which helps eliminate blur and makes video panning a lot smoother in both Full HD and 4K video.

There’s a wide range of modes and apps to choose from without ever leaving camera mode

Sony Xperia Z2 TimeShift

The Z2 also has a new slow motion mode called TimeShift Video. This shoots video clips at 120fps so you can slow down intense action shots without cutting the sound. It’s a shame you have to edit your videos as soon as you’ve shot them, but the simple touch interface was very easy to use. Just drag your finger over the curved bar where you want the footage to slow down and watch the results back live onscreen. Once you’ve finished making adjustments, all you need to do is hit the save button and it will be saved to your phone’s internal storage.

As you can see in the video above, the slow-motion effect is superb. We filmed some flowers wafting in the breeze in our back garden and the two sections we slowed down were beautifully smooth and defined with hardly any judder. Other phones we’ve seen with slow-motion features have often only let us shoot video at very low resolutions, so it was great to see the Z2 let us shoot video at 1,280×720.

Admittedly, there’s a noticeable amount of sound distortion, particularly when the footage first slows down and resumes normal speed again. We’d much rather have some sound than none at all, though, as other flagship smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S5 cut the sound out altogether, making for far less exciting home videos when you play them back to your friends. The sound transitions aren’t quite as slick as those on the iPhone 5S, but the Z2 certainly isn’t too far behind.

Where the Z2 beats the iPhone 5S is that it saves both the edited slow-motion version and the original 120fps video to your phone’s internal storage, making it easier to share both files on social networks.

There are also a whole host of other photo and video apps available within the camera app itself. These let you edit your photos with both Sony’s onboard editing software and additional apps that apply filters and special effects. These range from Background Defocus, Timeshift Burst, Sweep Panorama and AR Effect (which inserts otherworldly scenes such as prehistoric dinosaurs and aquatic fish into your photos in real time), to third party apps such as Vine. It’s a neat touch, and certainly much easier than having to open up each application individually away from the main camera.

TimeShift Video uses a simple touch interface to create dynamic slow-mo video shots

Like its predecessor, the Z2 doesn’t take 20.7-megapixel images by default. When left in its Superior Auto mode, the camera is locked to taking 8-megapixel images, so you’ll have to switch to Manual to take larger resolution photos. In both modes, though, we found that colours looked perfectly bright and vibrant, but objects in the background weren’t anywhere near as sharp or clearly defined as shots we took on the Nokia Lumia 1020’s camera, for example. This is to be expected somewhat when the Lumia 1020 has a huge 1/1.5in 40-megapixel sensor, but it was nevertheless a little disappointing.