Review: The Sizzling Hot Sony Xperia Z3 Plus
The super sleek Sony Xperia Z3 Plus is powerful but has one big flaw.
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Sony recently launched their latest flagship smartphone in India, the Xperia Z3+. The new phone is exorbitantly priced at Rs 55,990 and offers top-of-the-line specifications that can give the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the LG G4 a run for their money.
But is it really that great?
What’s Good?
Let’s start with the design. When you look at the Sony Xperia Z3+, you won’t notice much divergence from the previous generation Z phones from Sony’s Xperia stable. But if you look closely, the phone is a little bit different.
There is a certain shine on the phone now with its new colours. And it weighs just 144 grams. The phone feels light in the hands and grips well. As expected, the Z3+ offers Sony’s industrial design and is IP68 waterproof and dust resistant.
Sony has worked on waterproofing so well that the phone does not even have port covers on the charging dock. The corners of the phone are pushed inside making it a safer for the phones structure to hold if you accidentally drop it.
The rear camera lens is also neatly integrated into the Xperia Z3+ structure making the phone quite elegant to hold in your hands. The phone measures 146.3x71.9mm and has a thickness of 6.9mm which makes it just the right size for a 5 inch smartphone.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Plus sports a 5.2-inch display with a 1080X1920 pixel IPS display, which is quite bright and comes with an adaptive display that makes it easier to see in bright sunlight conditions.
This kind of adaptive display technology can also be found on the Xiaomi Mi4i, which comes in pretty handy as it makes the screen on your phone non-reflective under direct sunlight and harsh lighting in outdoor conditions. The touch response is also smooth on the Xperia Z3+.
The primary camera on the Sony Xperia Z3+ is a 20.7 megapixel camera with LED flash. The camera is no upgrade from the Xperia Z3, and while it’s a good camera, it’s not as good as the one on the Samsung Galaxy S6 or the LG G4. Images come out sharp and crisp. The 4K video recording mode is also pretty amazing on the Xperia Z3+.
The dedicated camera capture key on the sony Xperia Z3+ is a great addition as it makes it easier to frame and click images on the go.
For selfie lovers, the 5 megapixel camera on the Sony Xperia Z3+ did not disappoint us at all. It’s a very good camera phone overall, however, there is a but.
What’s Bad?
The Sony Xperia Z3+ is like a supercharged Maruti Suzuki 800. There is so much processing power that the phone heats up like crazy. We have experienced phone heating issues earlier with the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Xiaomi Mi4i, but this one takes the cake. The issue is most prominent while using the camera on this phone.
Had this been launched in the winter, the heating would have featured in the ‘What’s Good’ section because it has the potential of being a great hand warmer.
The 2,930 mAh high density battery that Sony packs in the Xperia Z3+ faces the brunt of this heating and drains out before sunset.
Though the Xperia Z3+ is powered by a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor which has combined one 2GHz quad-core processor, one 1.5GHz quad-core processor along with an Adreno 430 GPU, the phone struggles to take on heavy workload.
This is a flagship smartphone and you expect it to multitask, and yes, they have added 3GB of RAM, but that’s just a number for the Sony Xperia Z3+.
The phone hangs a lot and misfires lots of apps that you would use on a regular basis. The AnTuTu benchmark score on the Sony Xperia Z3+ came out to be 45,793 which is lower than the scores we got on the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the LG G4.
Why Buy It?
Sony Xperia Z3+ comes in some exotic colours like copper, black, white and aqua green, but don’t be fooled by the shiny phone. The heating issue is serious and that affects the performance and battery majorly.
The phone literally breathes fire.
The Sony Xperia Z3+ does not justify the price tag of Rs 55,900 at all, and you should just skip this phone completely for now. If you are in love with Sony, buy the earlier version – the Xperia Z3.
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