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Sony Xperia Z1 Review - Call Quality, Sound Quality, Battery Life and Verdict Review

Michael Sawh By Michael Sawh
Contributor

Call Quality, Sound Quality, Battery Life and Verdict

A chunky but exceptionally well made phone. Apple and Samsung should be worried

By Michael Sawh September 4th 2013 3:45pm
Hand holding a Sony Xperia Z1 displaying the home screen.

Sections

Sony Xperia Z1 – Call & Sound Quality 

The Xperia Z1 offers strong call quality and has a few features to help keep things loud and clear. In the call settings you can activate the microphone noise suppression to reduce background noise, use the speaker voice enhancement feature for richer listening experience and a Slow talk mode to slow down the speaker on the other end of the call.

We didn’t notice any issues of calls dropping out and the Z1 manages to do a good job of isolating the sound when you are in a noisy environment like being in a train station.

Sony Xperia Z1Close-up of smartphone's corner showing camera and build quality.

Sony Xperia Z1 – Music and Sound Quality

In the audio department, the speaker grill on the bottom of the phone is better positioned than it is on the Z and less susceptible to being cupped when held in portrait and landscape mode. For music and watching video, the speaker is loud but lacks richness when the volume is cranked up. If you have to listen to music or watch a film, you are best sticking to a pair of headphones.

Sony Xperia Z1 – Battery Life

The Xperia Z1 packs a massive 3,000mAh battery up almost 30% on the Xperia Z and 400mAh bigger than the battery nestled inside the Samsung Galaxy S4. You still have access to Sony’s power management tools including Stamina mode to disable data when the screen is off and a low battery mode to conserve power when you have reached critical battery life levels.

On full charge and in general use playing games, browsing the web, and using Twitter and Facebook, the battery manages to get us comfortably through a day dropping down to 60% by 11pm having been on full charge at 9.30am. That’s without tapping into the stamina and low battery modes. You can actually get a around a day and a half of proper use, if you are not using it excessively, for example with hours of gaming or keeping loads of apps running. 

In more extreme testing conditions, streaming a full HD video for 30 minutes the battery dropped to 78% from 100%. From a critical battery level the Z1 manages to add 15% of charge in 30 minutes making it ideal if you have forgotten to charge it the night before.

Should I buy the Sony Xperia Z1?

The Sony Xperia Z1 is a phone that addresses the key issue that plagued its predecessor, the design. The curvy look is a subtle change and makes the 5-inch smartphone so much more comfortable to hold and operate, but that’s not to say it’s not big. Adding a camera button makes having a waterproof design more useful now that you can actually take pictures and shoot video underwater.

It’s one of the most powerful smartphones we’ve had the pleasure to test. The camera is not as ground-breaking as the Nokia Lumia 1020, but it’s still a great performer. Throw in the option of the QX100 and QX10 lens accessories and you can get something closer to a high end compact camera.

Putting it up against its 5-inch rivals it more than matches the Galaxy S4 and the HTC One it in terms of performance and design. Sony’s take on Android is a great alternative to Samsung’s TouchWiz and HTC’s Sense UI once you get to grips with it.

Verdict

The Sony Xperia Z1 is powerful smartphone with an improved camera and elegant design to make it one of the best 5-inch smartphones to currently buy.

Next, read our round-up of the best Android phones to buy.

We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.

Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.

Used as our main phone for the review period

Reviewed using respected industry benchmarks and real world testing

Always has a SIM card installed

Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps

Trusted Score

rating-star rating-star rating-star rating-star rating-star

Score in detail

  • Performance 9
  • Camera 8
  • Design 8
  • Usability 8
  • Value 8
  • Features 9
  • Screen Quality 8
Michael Sawh
By Michael Sawh
Contributor

Michael Sawh is a Freelance Journalist specialising in wearable and fitness tech. Previously Editor of Wareable, he’s also spent time manning the features section at Trusted Reviews and T3. His words …

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Why trust our journalism?

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

author icon

Editorial independence

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

author icon

Professional conduct

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.

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