the Sony Xperia Z1 was for me a great
concept and an otherwise truly excellent phone let down by a really crummy TN
panel screen let's find out if its successor the Z2 improves enough of the
right things to win my coveted the screen doesn't suck and it's otherwise
pretty good too
award The Flash Voyager GTX USB 3 Drive
from Corsair provides SSD like performance and fits comfortably in your
pocket click now to learn more things started off on a high note when I pulled
this custom Experia Z2 more on this later and possibly an exciting surprise
out of its custom box and discovered that Sony has a wireless data transfer
wizard now in addition to their older PC based one thumbs up during the setup
process you're prompted to create an optional Sony account which handles helping you track down your phone or
wipe it if you lose it and then you are dumped onto the home screen where we get
our first look at the z2s pre-loaded apps most of these unfortunately are
here to help you buy content from Sony but things do get a little bit better
the second page ships with useful widgets for the camera gallery and
Walkman music playback app and while there's no shortcut here Sony also
includes a rudimentary backup and restore app something I feel like stock
Android is really missing onto the product tour in ergonomics uh basic
specs wise we've got a Snapdragon 801 processor at 2.3 GHz with 3 gigs of of
RAM 16 gigs of onboard storage a 3200 mAh battery Wireless AC and LTE and an
aluminum SL glass ID that I find absolutely beautiful so on the surface
compared to the Z1 it's basically now with 30% more gen but looking past that
starting at the front of the phone we find one significant Improvement almost
immediately that screen has gotten more than a 2 in upgrade it's an IPS panel
now instead of a TN panel that means dramatically better viewing angles and
colors and you can even change white balance to suit your preference now with
software so I guess that's it review over the Z2 is the Z1 but with the big
glaring issue addressed no no wait actually there's
other stuff too hold on uh also on the front we find a 2.2 megapixel selfie
camera and what's this front-facing speakers they're loud they sound good
and most importantly they're actually aiming the sound at your years
congratulations Sony xeria Z2 owners you now get to join the club of cool kids
who don't watch videos in a mirror to be able to hear what's going on on the top
we find a mic for active noise cancellation and a waterproof open
headset Jack on the left is a Sim and charging port slot with that same cheesy
cover flap on the bottom is a wrist strap Loop and the main microphone then
on the right is a covered micro SD slot the lock button whose side position I
find perfect for larger phones like this a volume rocker and a dedicated camera
button something I wish that more phones had finally on the back is a 20.7 megap
main camera and on tone flash with a glass backing material that's covered up
by this custom skin speaking of skins onto the software Sony's skin hasn't
changed a whole bunch since the last time that I used it they haven't really
altered much from stock Android either but there are a few things I noticed so
first up messing with the way that Google now works is not okay there's no
Google go now from the log screen and this is much more upsetting like LG Sony
has added extra crap to the Google Now swipe up this needs to stop I don't want
to be trying to voice control my phone and end up on a shopping page for recent
songs changing gears I'm pleased with the improvements they've made to the
keyboard I'd like to see vertical rizab ility like on the LG G3 because I found
the space Bar's position a little low because of the phone's very small chin
bar but overall the correction was good the keyboard was responsive and this is
the first time doing a phone review I haven't bothered to switch to swift key
in quite some time highlighting text for copy paste though in certain places like
the Chrome address bar is now done by double tapping instead of long pressing
I'd probably get used to it um if it was everywhere but here in Gmail it's long
press instead so that was kind of weird and threw me off unlike the Z1 skin
which had a nice little quick toggles cluster above your notifications on the
Z2 Sony has moved them to a separate quick setting screen like everyone else
and while they can be customized some key stuff is missing like a flashlight
toggle so I needed to install power toggles bummer multitasking is the same
as the old one though so vertical scrolling with only three items visible
at a time they have added a favorites bar which is interesting it lets you
open small apps and uh widgets has a little mini app I guess it's kind of
neat for quickly checking emails or tweets but I didn't find myself using it
much speaking of apps App Management within the app tray is still excellent
icon rearranging feels snappier than other devices I've used and the app tray
is boss with a surge function a variety of sorting options and a link to the
Play Store available by swiping in from the left continuing to dig through the
menus and settings I wasn't too impressed I did find a super badass
glove friendly mode that works even if you have something over your fingers but
all in all there's not too much customizability with only barebones
accessibility and some heart of hearing friendly stuff changing wallpapers and
the like there's actually just a single lonely gesture control on the entire
phone although it is probably the one that people are most likely to use you
know this one do the
answer anyway uh so then I checked out a submenu that I rarely Venture into and
Sony got my attention sound enhancement features normally really turn me off and
the reverby surround presets fall into that category but Sony does have a
couple of things in here that are actually worth turning on dynamic
normalizer increases the volume of quiet stuff and reduces the volume of loud
stuff in your Media Library without appreciably harming audio quality from
my time using it this is great if you have a wide variety of tracks in your
music library at different volume levels or if you have a particular YouTuber you
like to watch Whose video volume is always too low and then the other one is
their equalizer it's hardly the most comprehensive awesome software EQ ever
but it's free and better than nothing which is what most player software has
and now that I've switched from power amp to Google Play music for the subscription service system ydq was
really nice to have moving on to the camera and the app low light performance
didn't really blow me away with more noise than I'd like and images taken
indoors but coming from the 1 M8 having image stabilization even if it's digital
was great and being able to zoom thanks to all them megapixels was nice as well
dedicated buttons for still and video recording is a feature that should be in
every camera app and switching between modes while a little unintuitive if
you're not familiar with the locations of their icons is at least fairly fast
speaking of modes uh they range from I'd use that all the time like 720p 120 FPS
slow motion with audio and 4K video capture and a neat mode that lets you
take a picture first with the subject in Focus then with the background in focus
and adjust the perceived depth of field to wow I'd use that once for a laugh and
otherwise I wish Sony had spent their time working on anything else like infoi
which gives you information about like like landmarks and wine that you take
pictures of and this AR effect that lets you put dinosaurs in your studio fish in
your backyard and silly masks on all of your
co-workers which leads us to the conclusion over 6 months ago I reviewed
the xeria Z1 from Sony and came away impressed by the phenomenal battery life
and better than anything else I'd ever used haptic feedback and all that oops
continued here I easily have 35 plus%
battery life left at the end of the day and while I didn't like the screen of
the old one that's been fixed along with some other incremental improvements
leaving me well sad to say that this will be my last day using the xeria Z2
as my daily driver phone CU it really is a fantastic phone but lonus you might
say uh this was a really positive review of a phone that appears to totally kick
and is dust proof and waterproof down to
actually being submerged to boot why aren't you going to keep using it be
because I'm giving it away debrand generously or debrand I
actually don't know whatever they generously offered us this custom
skinned phone when they saw me decline some requests on Twitter for a video of
the Z2 because I couldn't get a review unit with the catch being that they
wanted me to give away the custom Linus Tech tips wrapped phone with a screen
protector on it and a matching wrapped box to one lucky viewer so all you need
to do is check the link in the video description or click here if you have
annotations enabled for the full details on how to win this phone with its
one-of-a-kind skin designed by edzel here at lonus Media Group so that's it
guys thanks for watching like this video if you liked it dislike it if you
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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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