INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
At a press conference held at the ongoing IFA electronics trade show in Berlin, Sony announced a bunch of new products across multiple
One of them was its new Xperia XZ3 smartphone, which succeeds the Xperia XZ2 that launched earlier this year
The company hasn't announced any pricing details yet, but says its latest flagship phone will be available towards the end of September in
We managed to snag some hands-on time with the Sony Xperia XZ3 and here's what we think.The first thing that caught our attention was the
new design of the front of this phone
Sony has also ditched its long-standing love of IPS panels in favour of a vibrant OLED panel
The 6-inch screen has an 18:9 aspect ratio and QHD+ resolution with HDR
that immediately struck us was the reduction in bulk
At 193g, the Xperia XZ3 felt quite light compared to Sony's recent offerings
This phone weighs less than the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Premium, and is also a lot slimmer at 9.9mm
The glass back does make it quite slippery though, and fingerprints were a huge problem.The main specifications of the phone are similar to
those of Sony's previous flagships
It's powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 mobile platform and has 4GB of RAM as well as 64GB of internal storage, which is expandable
It's IP65/ 68 certified for dust and water resistance, and features the same 19-megapixel Motion Eye rear camera that can shoot
slow-motion video at up to 960fps at 1080p
This worked pretty well when we tried it, but understandably, you need ample light to avoid a strobing effect in videos.The Xperia XZ3 will
ship with Android 9 Pie out-of-the-box, which makes it one of the first devices announced to do so
The new Xperia UI skin is quite minimalist and we're introduced to a new feature called Side Sense
The upper parts of the sides of the XZ3 have touch sensors, and you can double-tap either side of the phone to reveal a little pop-up menu
Sony says that this feature will use AI to learn your usage patterns and suggest different apps depending on your location
You can add apps to this list manually too
It takes some getting used to, as your finger needs to hit just the right spot, or it won't work
It automatically launches the camera app when the phone detects that you have picked it up and are holding it horizontally
This needs to be enabled within the camera app, but after that, just pick the phone up as if you are going to frame a photo, and the camera
app fires up in a matter of seconds.We tried the 19-megapixel camera out, and found that focusing was quick
There wasn't too much shutter lag either
However, the images we shot with Sony's demo units didn't seem very impressive on screen
Granted, the lighting at the venue wasn't great, but it wasn't dark either, and upon zooming in to the images a bit, we noticed a
watercolour-like effect on some textures
It's possible that this could improve once the Xperia XZ3 actually ships with its final software.The Sony Xperia XZ3 seems like a mild
refresh of the Xperia XZ2 in terms of specifications
While we certainly appreciate its new design and OLED display, we can't help but feel that Sony is a bit too late to the party
The Xperia XZ2 currently retails for an absurdly high price in India, which makes us wonder how Sony will price this new model when it is
The company really needs to start pricing its flagship phones a bit more sensibly, or it won't be long before Sony suffers a similar fate as
