Sony introduced the Xperia Z5, its new flagship phone
The Z5 comes with Sony’s best smartphone camera to date with a 23MP Exmore RS mobile sensor, an autofocus speed of 0.03 seconds (the world’s fastest autofocus), and improved SteadyShot.
As far as zoom goes, Sony introduced what they call 5x Clear Image Zoom (which is just a fancier, better digital zoom with fewer artifacts).
Sony also added a fingerprint scanner to the Z5, a feature that seems to be becoming standard on high end smartphones.
As usual Sony’s flagship is a waterproof phone, and it claims an impressive battery life of around two days.
Multiple models and sizes
The Z5 comes in regular and Z5 Compact formats (which translates to a 5.2 inch and a 4.6 inch display), but there is a third luxury option: the Z5 Premium.
The Z5 Premium has a 5.5 inch 4K screen, upscaling for your so-last-year 1080p videos, and can output 4K video to TVs wirelessly using DLNA. The Premium comes with what Sony calls “a large” 32GB internal memory (everyone else would probably call it “about right, if you’re careful”), which can be expanded with up to 200GB of SD card external memory.
High-Res audio
Sony’s claims it’s Z5 series supports high resolution wireless audio streaming via it’s LDAC codec. Given the reception that high resolution audio has received in the real world so far when pushed by products like the Pono (hint: Yahoo! described it as “the Emperor has no clothes,” while Ars Technica just went with “A tall, refreshing drink of snake oil”), we wouldn’t focus too much on this feature.
The Z5 line looks like a powerful Android contender. Are you buying one? Let us know at 1-800-899-INTO (4686).