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the Sony Xperia Z1 was for me a great

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concept and an otherwise truly excellent phone let down by a really crummy TN

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panel screen let's find out if its successor the Z2 improves enough of the

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right things to win my coveted the screen doesn't suck and it's otherwise

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pretty good too

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award The Flash Voyager GTX USB 3 Drive

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from Corsair provides SSD like performance and fits comfortably in your

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pocket click now to learn more things started off on a high note when I pulled

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this custom Experia Z2 more on this later and possibly an exciting surprise

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out of its custom box and discovered that Sony has a wireless data transfer

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wizard now in addition to their older PC based one thumbs up during the setup

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process you're prompted to create an optional Sony account which handles helping you track down your phone or

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wipe it if you lose it and then you are dumped onto the home screen where we get

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our first look at the z2s pre-loaded apps most of these unfortunately are

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here to help you buy content from Sony but things do get a little bit better

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the second page ships with useful widgets for the camera gallery and

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Walkman music playback app and while there's no shortcut here Sony also

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includes a rudimentary backup and restore app something I feel like stock

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Android is really missing onto the product tour in ergonomics uh basic

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specs wise we've got a Snapdragon 801 processor at 2.3 GHz with 3 gigs of of

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RAM 16 gigs of onboard storage a 3200 mAh battery Wireless AC and LTE and an

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aluminum SL glass ID that I find absolutely beautiful so on the surface

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compared to the Z1 it's basically now with 30% more gen but looking past that

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starting at the front of the phone we find one significant Improvement almost

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immediately that screen has gotten more than a 2 in upgrade it's an IPS panel

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now instead of a TN panel that means dramatically better viewing angles and

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colors and you can even change white balance to suit your preference now with

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software so I guess that's it review over the Z2 is the Z1 but with the big

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glaring issue addressed no no wait actually there's

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other stuff too hold on uh also on the front we find a 2.2 megapixel selfie

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camera and what's this front-facing speakers they're loud they sound good

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and most importantly they're actually aiming the sound at your years

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congratulations Sony xeria Z2 owners you now get to join the club of cool kids

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who don't watch videos in a mirror to be able to hear what's going on on the top

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we find a mic for active noise cancellation and a waterproof open

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headset Jack on the left is a Sim and charging port slot with that same cheesy

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cover flap on the bottom is a wrist strap Loop and the main microphone then

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on the right is a covered micro SD slot the lock button whose side position I

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find perfect for larger phones like this a volume rocker and a dedicated camera

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button something I wish that more phones had finally on the back is a 20.7 megap

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main camera and on tone flash with a glass backing material that's covered up

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by this custom skin speaking of skins onto the software Sony's skin hasn't

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changed a whole bunch since the last time that I used it they haven't really

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altered much from stock Android either but there are a few things I noticed so

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first up messing with the way that Google now works is not okay there's no

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Google go now from the log screen and this is much more upsetting like LG Sony

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has added extra crap to the Google Now swipe up this needs to stop I don't want

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to be trying to voice control my phone and end up on a shopping page for recent

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songs changing gears I'm pleased with the improvements they've made to the

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keyboard I'd like to see vertical rizab ility like on the LG G3 because I found

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the space Bar's position a little low because of the phone's very small chin

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bar but overall the correction was good the keyboard was responsive and this is

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the first time doing a phone review I haven't bothered to switch to swift key

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in quite some time highlighting text for copy paste though in certain places like

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the Chrome address bar is now done by double tapping instead of long pressing

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I'd probably get used to it um if it was everywhere but here in Gmail it's long

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press instead so that was kind of weird and threw me off unlike the Z1 skin

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which had a nice little quick toggles cluster above your notifications on the

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Z2 Sony has moved them to a separate quick setting screen like everyone else

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and while they can be customized some key stuff is missing like a flashlight

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toggle so I needed to install power toggles bummer multitasking is the same

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as the old one though so vertical scrolling with only three items visible

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at a time they have added a favorites bar which is interesting it lets you

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open small apps and uh widgets has a little mini app I guess it's kind of

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neat for quickly checking emails or tweets but I didn't find myself using it

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much speaking of apps App Management within the app tray is still excellent

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icon rearranging feels snappier than other devices I've used and the app tray

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is boss with a surge function a variety of sorting options and a link to the

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Play Store available by swiping in from the left continuing to dig through the

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menus and settings I wasn't too impressed I did find a super badass

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glove friendly mode that works even if you have something over your fingers but

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all in all there's not too much customizability with only barebones

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accessibility and some heart of hearing friendly stuff changing wallpapers and

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the like there's actually just a single lonely gesture control on the entire

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phone although it is probably the one that people are most likely to use you

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know this one do the

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answer anyway uh so then I checked out a submenu that I rarely Venture into and

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Sony got my attention sound enhancement features normally really turn me off and

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the reverby surround presets fall into that category but Sony does have a

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couple of things in here that are actually worth turning on dynamic

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normalizer increases the volume of quiet stuff and reduces the volume of loud

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stuff in your Media Library without appreciably harming audio quality from

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my time using it this is great if you have a wide variety of tracks in your

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music library at different volume levels or if you have a particular YouTuber you

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like to watch Whose video volume is always too low and then the other one is

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their equalizer it's hardly the most comprehensive awesome software EQ ever

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but it's free and better than nothing which is what most player software has

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and now that I've switched from power amp to Google Play music for the subscription service system ydq was

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really nice to have moving on to the camera and the app low light performance

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didn't really blow me away with more noise than I'd like and images taken

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indoors but coming from the 1 M8 having image stabilization even if it's digital

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was great and being able to zoom thanks to all them megapixels was nice as well

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dedicated buttons for still and video recording is a feature that should be in

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every camera app and switching between modes while a little unintuitive if

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you're not familiar with the locations of their icons is at least fairly fast

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speaking of modes uh they range from I'd use that all the time like 720p 120 FPS

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slow motion with audio and 4K video capture and a neat mode that lets you

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take a picture first with the subject in Focus then with the background in focus

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and adjust the perceived depth of field to wow I'd use that once for a laugh and

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otherwise I wish Sony had spent their time working on anything else like infoi

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which gives you information about like like landmarks and wine that you take

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pictures of and this AR effect that lets you put dinosaurs in your studio fish in

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your backyard and silly masks on all of your

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co-workers which leads us to the conclusion over 6 months ago I reviewed

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the xeria Z1 from Sony and came away impressed by the phenomenal battery life

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and better than anything else I'd ever used haptic feedback and all that oops

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continued here I easily have 35 plus%

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battery life left at the end of the day and while I didn't like the screen of

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the old one that's been fixed along with some other incremental improvements

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leaving me well sad to say that this will be my last day using the xeria Z2

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as my daily driver phone CU it really is a fantastic phone but lonus you might

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say uh this was a really positive review of a phone that appears to totally kick

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and is dust proof and waterproof down to

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actually being submerged to boot why aren't you going to keep using it be

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because I'm giving it away debrand generously or debrand I

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actually don't know whatever they generously offered us this custom

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skinned phone when they saw me decline some requests on Twitter for a video of

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the Z2 because I couldn't get a review unit with the catch being that they

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wanted me to give away the custom Linus Tech tips wrapped phone with a screen

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protector on it and a matching wrapped box to one lucky viewer so all you need

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to do is check the link in the video description or click here if you have

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annotations enabled for the full details on how to win this phone with its

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one-of-a-kind skin designed by edzel here at lonus Media Group so that's it

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guys thanks for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you

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disliked it leave a comment letting us know what you thought of our review of the Z2 what do you think stands out to

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you about this phone don't leave a comment with to to win the vid the phone

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that's not how it works please click the link everyone gets confused by that um

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as usual we do also have in the video description a link for how to support us

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you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one change your Amazon bookmark to one with

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our affiliate code so we get a small kick back when you buy stuff or if you love what we do so much you want to

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contribute monthly then we have an option for that as well we really appreciate your support thanks again for

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watching and as always don't forget to

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subscribe

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