A Better Camera Improves Sony’s Waterproof Phone

Sony is ratcheting up the camera phone wars
with the Android-powered Xperia Z1s. Available
exclusively on T-Mobile, the Xperia Z1s is a
waterproof smartphone with a 5-inch 1080p display,
just like its predecessor, the Xperia Z. The Z1s has an
upgraded camera with fun lens effects, a much larger
battery, and a faster processor. The camera still isn’t as
good as it needs to be, and there are some other minor
issues, but the Z1s is an excellent choice if you want a
speedy phone for multimedia or gaming that you can
get wet.

DESIGN, DISPLAY, AND CONNECTIVITY

The Xperia Z1s measures 5.74 by 2.79 by 0.31 inches
(HWD) and weighs 5.71 ounces, which makes it
noticeably larger and heavier than the 5.1-ounce Xperia
Z. It’s still quite attractive, though. The handset has
glass front and back panels, with an IP58-rated
waterproof coating that also supports finger tracking
underwater, and a smoked silver and black plastic band
wrapped around the edges. A covered charger port and
microSD memory card slot are on the left side, along
with a center-mounted docking port. The bottom edge
houses the speakerphone and mic behind a long
rectangular grille. On the right there’s a covered SIM
card slot, a circular silver power button, a volume
rocker, and a camera shutter button; the 3.5mm
headphone jack is on the top edge.
The 5-inch, 1080p Triluminos display looks sharp at a
very tight 441ppi, but not particularly vivid or bright.
There’s a prominent bezel at the top and bottom, with a
much thinner one on either side of the display; this
explains why the phone is unusually tall given the
display size. Typing on the on-screen keyboard is easy
in portrait mode.
The Xperia Z1s supports LTE and HSPA+ 42. Its LTE
modem is Category 4, so it handles the maximum
speeds of T-Mobile’s upcoming 20+20 LTE network. You also get
802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, NFC, and Bluetooth
4.0. In a series of speed tests, the Xperia Z1s averaged 12 to 14Mbps down and 7
to 15Mbps up in Midtown Manhattan on T-Mobile’s rapidly expanding 4G LTE
network. The Xperia Z1s also works as a wireless hotspot with the appropriate
data plan.

CALL QUALITY AND RECEPTION

Voice quality was mixed; we were hoping for an improvement over the Xperia
Z1’s inferior call quality, but we didn’t get it. Through the earpiece, callers
sounded trebly and a bit harsh. There’s plenty of gain available, but it’s not
pleasant to listen to. Transmissions through the microphone had the opposite
problem: They sounded muffled and indistinct, and the Xperia Z1s’s mic let
through plenty of Manhattan street noise. An iPhone 5s on T-Mobile sounded
much better in all cases; it suppressed background street noise, and my voice
was clear, crisp, and still warm-sounding in both directions. The Xperia Z1s also
supports Wi-Fi calling.
Calls sounded fine through a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset. Voice dialing
worked well enough over Bluetooth using Google’s built-in voice dialer. The
Bluetooth stack is buggy, though; sometimes it took a minute or more to pair
with the Jawbone Era, and once it froze up for a minute while searching for
nearby devices. The speakerphone sounded clear and distinct, but should go
louder than it does. The oversized 3,000mAh battery should be good for extralong battery life.

INTERFACE, APPS, AND MULTIMEDIA

Under the hood are a 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor
with an Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB RAM. The Xperia Z1s runs Android 4.3 Jelly
Bean, and a KitKat upgrade is in the works, but there’s no confirmed release
date. Benchmark scores were excellent across the board; as you’d expect, the
Xperia Z1s is as fast as the Galaxy Note 3 and any top-end Android tablet.
You get five home screens to customize and swipe between. Everything looks
and feels smooth. Sony includes its own Walkman, Movies, and Album apps,
along with PlayStation and PlayStation Mobile for accessing your online PSN
profile, messages, and notifications. Sony is promising a number of “second
screen” PlayStation apps, and you can play PlayStation Mobile games with a
wireless DualShock 3 controller. You also get MobiSystems Office Suite, which
reads and edits Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, and Sony
Select, which froze on startup. There’s also a lot of T-Mobile bloatware, which
unfortunately cannot be removed.
There’s 32GB of internal storage, with 25.1GB free for your apps and media.
The microSD card slot works with cards up to 64GB in capacity. Music tracks
sounded clear and full through Plantronics BackBeat Go stereo Bluetooth
headphones, and the Xperia Z1s also played FLAC, OGG, and AAC files. Fullscreen movies looked sharp, if not exceptionally vivid, at resolutions up to
1080p, and the phone played all the usual formats including DivX and Xvid.
You can also display content wirelessly on a Sony Bravia HDTV.

CAMERA AND CONCLUSIONS

The 20.7-megapixel autofocus f/2.0 camera features a 27mm focal length,
image stabilization, and an HDR mode. It goes up to ISO 6400. The Z1s’ sensor
is larger than the Xperia Z’s and collects more light, and it can also do lossless
zoom up to 3x in a 5MP mode. There’s also a 2MP front-facing camera for
selfies and video chats.
Sony includes five apps dedicated to the camera: Info-eye, which scans books,
wine bottles, and other objects, and searches the Web for information about
them; AR (Augmented Reality) Effect, which adds costumes, glasses, flowers, or
even dinosaurs to your photos; Background Defocus, which lets you adjust the
depth of field for your photos; Social Live, which broadcasts live video on
Facebook; and Timeshift Burst, which grabs a series of 60 shots in rapid
succession and lets you pick the best one.
We’ve tested some 13- and 16MP camera phones in the past, including the
one on the Xperia Z, and they haven’t quite measured up to their ratings in
image quality. Sadly, that’s still true here. The Xperia Z1s takes fine pictures,
and they border on very good outdoors. But contrast is relatively poor, and flesh
tones can come out looking jaundiced indoors. And though Sony says the faster
processor helps with autofocus speed, the Xperia Z1s still takes longer to focus
and fire than the iPhone 5s—that and the Lumia 1020 are still superior cameras.
Recorded 1080p videos played smoothly at 30 frames per second from both
cameras, though you can’t tap to focus the way you can with photos. Image
stabilization was superb; I saw very little shaking in the
various videos I recorded with the Xperia Z1s. And you
can shoot photos and videos underwater, though the
sound will obviously be muffled.

The Xperia Z1s is still surpassed by the thinner and
lighter (if less rugged) Samsung Galaxy S4, which also
has a more vivid AMOLED display and its genuinely
useful TouchWiz UI layer and apps; the iPhone 5 has
the best app selection and a clearly better camera; and
the Motorola Moto X’s form factor falls nicely between
those of the iPhone 5s and Xperia Z1s. Even so, the Z1s
is a very good smartphone, and the only one on
T-Mobile to fuse a waterproof design with top-end
hardware. If that combination speaks to you, you can
buy it with confidence.