11 months ago the Droid Turbo became my
daily driver phone not thanks to its slim sexy design outstanding camera or
timely Android updates but rather because of its massive 3900 milliamp
battery because while there might be things about the Droid Turbo that suck
damn it it can suck all day and for some of us that's where the search for a
companion device ends but there is
another way to skin that particular cat and that's where today's device the
Xperia Z5 compact gets very interesting
in addition to the tried and true strap
more double A to it strategy Sony has made some interesting Hardware choices
that could just earn this device a spot
in my front pocket for good
Corsair's RMI series power supplies feature premium components for great
performance with very low noise check out the link in the video description to
learn more let's start with the physical overview because the Xperia Z5 compact
is completely unlike any Flagship class phone that I've put my hands on in has
it been 5 years since I made this video
I bought an iPhone 4 it's actually small
enough for me to operate it with one hand so at the the front you'll find a
4.6 in IPS touchscreen along with a 5.1
megapixel 1080p selfie camera a Sony logo and wow dual front-facing speakers
okay they're not amazingly loud and they're kind of tiny sounding with less
stereo separation than a larger device would have but this comes with the
territory when you make the speaker smaller and closer together and Clarity
particularly of dialogue was a very strong point compared to other devices
I've used recently but then again these speakers are up against speakers that
fire into your palm and firing into your palm has never been a successful
strategy on the back is a Flash and a 23
megapixel rear camera featuring a Sony sensor and recording modes ranging from
4K at 30 FPS through 1080p at 60 and
720p at 120 and then really not much
else unless you count the orange dbrand skin on there at the top and bottom are
a couple of mics for noise cancellation a headphone jack and a microe charging
port I sure wish this had been type c on
the right is the power button that doubles as an adequate if not especially
fast or accurate fingerprint sensor an unusually positioned volume rocker that
had me kind of scratching my head until I'd used the phone for a while and
realized that having it out of the way like this is perfect the only reason
that I'm messing around with the volume button on all my other phones is to
reset it when I accidentally press the damn thing so Bravo Sony on on that one
and then finally there's also a dedicated camera button that was a total
pleasure to use especially once I figured out that it had a half press so
I can lock in my focus and exposure before quickly snapping the shot on the
left side you'll find a wrist strap Loop if you're into hanging Jewels off your
phone or whatever and a watertight flap that helps the phone achieve its ip68
Ingress Protection rating making it theoretically safe to have exposed to
fresh or even chlorinated water for short Peri periods of time with that
said I wouldn't bet your $500 investment given Sony's recent backpedaling act on
just how safe it is to use your device underwater under that flap we'll find a
nano SIM slot and wow another surprise a
Micro SD slot now in some cases where
reasonably priced higher capacity models exist I don't consider SD expansion a
huge deal but since we're talking about a phone here that records 4K video and
only has 32 gigs of internal storage I see this as a huge Boon for potential
buyers and on that note I guess we haven't actually done the whole spec
thing yet have we it's pretty darn similar to its Big Brothers the Z5 and
the Z5 premium with a Snapdragon 810 8 core CPU beating at its heart at 2 GHz
on the four more powerful cores that throttled pretty decisively during
synthetic tests but at least had the decency to stay cool during normal
operation and an adreno 430 graphics processor for RAM we're looking at a
middling 2 gigs of ddr3l we've got the usual array of
wireless tech with Bluetooth AC Wi-Fi and FM radio and inside is a 2700
milliamp battery not that exceptional
sounding but there's more here than meets the eye so let's get back to the
screen for a minute Sony went all modern Flagship on some aspects of this phone
with the reduction in system memory from 3 gigs in the full sizee models being
one of the main spec differences but for the screen Sony went with a very
conservative 720p LCD and I know this might be confusing
to regular viewers who are used to me saying more is better give me more but I
actually love this decision that's still a very respectable 323 pixels per inch
about equivalent to Apple's Retina Display standard and the lower
resolution combined with the smaller size means that the Z5 compact performed
as well or better than the DROID turbo
in my about how much battery do I have left at the end of each day test with
usually anywhere from 15 to 30% left in
the tank even after demanding days with long phone calls and even moderate GPS
use absolutely fantastic not that going back to a small
screen didn't have its drawbacks Sony
opted for onscreen buttons something I liked when holding the phone in
landscape mode but eats up valuable screen real estate um for every
Improvement to the content consumption experience that I got from those
front-facing speakers the smaller screen
really clawed some of it back and man I
had really forgotten how much space gets taken up by the number Row in swift key
and suggested websites in a browser when you have so much less space to work with
Sony's software fortunately didn't make life more difficult the minimum text
size freed up some room and overall even though the marshmallow update hasn't
arrived yet I was pleased by the responsiveness the visual style and the
options provided in the settings menu there was nothing that really stood out
to me as like wow Sony this is like super dumb which I guess leads us to the
camera to be clear it's not the iPhone 6
or 6s and it's not the Galaxy S6 Edge
both of which offer faster camera amp launch times faster shutter speeds and
faster saving times for pictures taken
mid video and completed video files but
the dedicated shutter button helps a fair bit with this and the photo results
while not optically stabilized were good
enough in most situations I think if I
was designing the phone I might choose a less wide lens so I don't have to stand
like three feet from a given subject but
all in all it's a fairly minor complaint
which leads us to conclusion time there are are some things I'm going to miss
about my old daily driver taking the downgrades that come with our upgrades
is one of the crosses that we Android people have to bear like the gestures to
launch the flashlight when they work and
Camera there we go and the notification Peak feature but overall the easy
one-handed operation waterproofness and improved camera while retaining
outstanding battery life have won me over I just can't wait to see what the
marshmallow update and the new updated camera app bring to the table because I
already loving this phone speaking of loving your
phone the brand skins they make these
awesome vinyl covers so you can practice safe phone love they not only make your
phone look better you can choose from a wide variety of different skins and
styles and use the configurator on their site to check out all the different
options but they also protect it from incidental bump
and scratches now to be clear you drop it screen down your dbrand skin is not
going to do anything but if you're carrying it around in your pocket and
you don't want it to get all scratched and scuffed a skin can be a perfect and
lowcost option to keep your phone looking like the day it was new and they
do more than just phones dbrand offers skins for game controllers consoles and
even some computers and this is pretty
cool coming very soon dbrand is going to be doing a limited edition run of kind
of an LT color carbon fiber orange
actually it's the same as the one that you saw on scrapyard War season 3 so
stay tuned for that so check them out over at dbrand.com
whatever I'm sure we'll have a link below me and it'll be linked in the
video description and check out what your device will look like with one of
their Precision cut gorgeous vinyl skins
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that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the
top right corner to check out Luke's Fallout 4 build guide log whatever it is
basically he builds a computer inside a plastic bomb it's pretty sick