Xperia ZL review

Well well well. Finally I got myself new android smart phone Xperia ZL by Sony.

I now with that my posts are small so here is quick review.

Pros-
1. Excellent fit and finish. I got red one which looks extremely gorgeous. When compared to Samsung devices those feel like generation older than my phone. Front is like black slab with no sensors visible at all. Black is of matte plastic, very comfortable to hold. Also its very compact even though it has 5 inch screen.

2. Excellent razor sharp display. I just cant explain how sharp it is. Lower ppi phones now look eyesore.

3. Expandable memory, fm radio, descent battery - few things which are difficult to find nowadays in high end devices.

Performance is excellent and other things are very good too. So next I will talk about cons and some issues which people seem to be concerned with.

Cons -
1. Camera is not that great. Ok, you will here this a lot. Here is my take on this.
Camera is 13mp, at this insane resolution, if you look for per pixel detail, then those are not there. But image quality is very good at web/screen/print resolutions. For all practical purposes this is enough and very good. Also, this lack of clarity is mostly software related, and sony image sensor and lens definitely looks capable of generating very good photos, so firmware updated might fix this as well. Overall, camera is good if not best.

2. Screen viewing angles are moderate. This is not really false. This is not IPS display, but colors dont invert when angle changes. Saturation and contrast is affected but its not much. Display is good and extremely sharp.

3. Spearker volume / in call clarity is not very good. Agreed that voice appears a bit muffled on default setting, but this can be easily corrected by using 'bright' equilizer for in call volume. Speaker volume in good and very loud, no issues there.

4. Battery life is bad - Battery is sufficient for moderate one day use. This is roughly 3hrs of screen on time with 2G data active all the time and more than 220 random apps installed. Rss feeds, news feed, email, whats app syncing all the time. This to me is descent battery life, its nothing great. But having 440ppi screen would mean that battery would drain fast when screen is on.
Also I have not observed substantially better battery life with other phones like samsung galaxy grand. Another point is that, if battery lasts 1.4 days, its of little use as you will need to charge it anyway on daily bases. Only advantage is that it gives you more headroom. But this battery is easily managable.

Also video times are excellent in my opinion, I could watch 40min of video with 10% battery which roughly equals to 6hrs of video time, which is very good in my opinion.

At last what I would have liked to be added -
- Battery life should have been better. Sony could have reduced the ppi to increase battery life and I would have been very happy.
- Battery should have been user replaceable. This device is not waterproof, so I dont know why its not user replaceable. The battery is eventually going to die and that thought scares me. Battery could be replaced at service center, but say after 2 years if battery is no more available then? Also I did not like battery location, if you look at ZL disassembly video, battery is located just behind the screen and a lot of components need to be removed are reattached to replace the battery. I dont know why Sony opted for such weird location . This also means the when battery heats, it heats up screen and other circuits as well, this is would only reduce phone life in my opinion.
- Because of the way xperia Z is marketed, there are very few ZL buyers and hence there are lesser dev support for ZL. All xperia Z development might work for ZL, but its not guaranteed.

 So thats all I can think about ATM. See you soon