It certainly sounds promising, but there’s a lot to prove. The camera seemed to perform well in my brief testing, but being in a small room with artificial lighting doesn’t really give you a sense of what this baby could be capable of. Will it take stills that match the Galaxys, Pixels and iPhones of 2017? That’s a little harder to tell. It’s, again, a technological showoff and indeed something that plays nice with advertising as a cool feature. Is there really a case to be made for this feature? No. Speaking of over-the-top things, the XZ Premium also packs a brand new camera that, swaying away from the dual-lens trend, pushes things up to 19MP and lets its IMX300 sensor shoot at a ridiculous 960fps at 720p. With no real Daydream (nor any other kind of VR system) support, the astonishingly beautiful panel is just… there. It increases the contrast and vividness of colors, as per Sony’s own units on display (above, Z5 Premium vs XZ Premium), but that’s about it. There’s even an HDR lettering next to it, although I’m still not entirely sure what that means. But yes, if you were still wondering, the 5.5″ LCD panel looks absolutely stunning. Sony doesn’t really have a reason for using such an overkill component in its phone, other than the fact that its R&D labs flexed their muscles and were capable of engineering this beauty. We had seen it in its true predecessor, the Z5 Premium, and it’s here again in all of its glory - yes, that 4K display. One of them, of course, is the display, to which the device owes its nomenclature almost entirely. This is not a proper sequel to the Xperia XZ, I learn, but rather a maxed-out version of it, that however still enjoys some key updates. Additionally, some of the features that make the XZ Premium what it is further exemplify that. Sony’s marketing strategy, which sees it selling the device as a GSM unlocked unit and with no real carrier partnership in the crucial US market, is an example of that. There were other OEMs are trying to push design boundaries (like LG and most likely Samsung) or deliver overall compelling packages with a few standout features (like Huawei‘s P10 or even BlackBerry‘s KeyOne). Sony, reluctantly, is simply keeping its own path, seemingly looking at the competition uninterested, from afar. The thing that immediately struck me about the Xperia XZ Premium is… Sony’s philosophy behind it. It therefore isn’t meant to give a final judgement by any means - but we know that the product may be of interest for more than a few, so I’m here to tell you what my very first impressions were… I want to put a disclaimer at the very top of this post: I have used the Xperia XZ Premium for about twenty minutes in one of Sony‘s booths at Mobile World Congress, and everything that follows is just a brief recap of my experience combined with my quick chat with the company’s reps.
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