Sony Xperia Z Ultra

Sony Xperia Z Ultra

I had the opportunity of testing what is convincingly the most beautiful phablet after its premiere last month in London. The 6.4-inch Sony Xperia Z Ultra, a device that is almost identical to the 5-inch smartphone Xperia Z, is exceptionally elegant (it is just 6.5 mm thick) and features impressive artisanship. It weighs only 212 grams despite its front and cover being made out of glass and, just like Sony's flagship smartphone and tablet models, the company's phablet is waterproof, which gives it a significant advantage over the competition.

Sony Xperia Z UltraThe resolution of the 6.4-inch screen is 1080 x 1920 pixels, resulting in an exceptionally great pixel density of 344 ppi. Imaging on the display is therefore splendidly sharp and individual pixels cannot be recognized by the naked eye, even while looped straight lines are being animated, which is an impressive achievement for such a big screen. Still, I did not care for the contrast. Just like with Xperia Z and Xperia Tablet Z, black tones could be darker and white tones could be brighter, which would make other colors appear more realistic.

Compared to the smartphone and the tablet, the viewing angle of the Xperia Z Ultra is significantly better and contrast sustainability cannot be objected to, such as it is. It is evident that Sony is progressing where display craftsmanship quality is concerned. That said, even though one can sense that the phablet is a newer device than the smartphone and the tablet, there is still room for catching up with the competition.

This is the first Snapdragon 800 device I have had the opportunity of trying in my hand. This chipset comes with four Krait 400 cores running a 2.2 GHz clock with Adreno 330 graphics and 3 GB of RAM with LTE support. As such, the phablet's features are above average in terms of speed and lag cannot be felt even while performing the most demanding tasks. It would have been great, though, if Sony had managed to include a battery in such a device that had a greater capacity than 2050 mAh.