If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, Apple must be thrilled by Sony's Xperia Z. It's a skinny (7.9mm thick) smartphone, sandwiched between two sheets of tempered Gorilla glass. Sound familiar? And just like the iPhone 5, the button-free double-glazing felt pretty close to polished perfection in our sweaty palms when Sony's Holly Rossetti showed Wired.co.uk an early sample.
Sony is even calling this mighty quad-core Android handset a belated answer to the iPhone. In fact, it's upping the stakes considerably with its five-inch 443ppi Reality Display that beats Apple's Retina Display for resolution. It also draws on Sony's extensive entertainment empire with Bravia, Vaio and Walkman technology all pitching in to improve the user experience. Oh yeah, and it's waterproof too.
On closer inspection, the frame that Sony describes as a robust fibreglass unibody, is plastic and there's no escaping the fact that glass and aluminium make the iPhone feel superior. The Xperia does have more output options though, including micro USB and micro HDMI ports.
With a Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor, there's no doubting that this is one of the fastest Android phones around too. Icons look pin sharp and applications open speedily on this huge five-inch screen. The 13-megapixel camera boasts Sony's Exmor RS system for effective low light photography and is the fist phone to offer an HRD mode for video.
The 16:9 aspect ratio is a perfect fit for video too and the specially developed Mobile Bravia Engine 2 worked its processing magic to improve the brightness and clarity of the various video clips we tried.
Perhaps the most important advantage is the way it works seamlessly with Sony's other product lines. Something that Apple cannot offer. Touch this phone on your Sony Bravia TV for example, and the NFC system can transfer pictures, or other data files from one device to the other. We weren't able to test this ourselves yet, but it's a nice idea and surprising really that Sony hasn't exploited this feature before.
The Sony Xperia Z will hit the UK in March, while the similarly styled Xperia ZL launches globally in Q1 this year.
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