Sony Z3 Compact benchmarks and impressions

I finally got a replacement of my HTC Desire, I waited a lot an Ubuntu Phone alternative which isn’t ready yet, the iPhone 6, a new Google Nexus phone with Android L but it is a “big padella”, so I’ve bought a Sony Xperia Z3 Compact which is 4.6 inches, fast and Sony will update it to Android Lollipop.. I hope soon.

First look

The build quality is very high (it is also waterproof IP68). The IPS display has a good view angle and blacks are blacks.
The operative system (Android 4.4) is full of Sony proprietary bloatware apps. I hope will allow in future a pure Android experience.

If you come from a SIM or MicroSIM, you have to replace it with a nanoSIM.

Camera

It has a dedicated button, the quality and white balance are good, there is the slowmotion (Timeshift) and the Augmented reality feature,.. that it nice to play with but I don’t think I’ll use it for real.

The 4K videos are huge in memory, maybe a bit laggy but the problem is that most 1080p TVs can’t read them.

Web benchmarks and performance

javascript speed (v8 v5) score 3426
canvas speed (fishbowl 250, no audio, no water) 25 fps
html5 test 497
antutu 43916
geekbench 3 single975 multicore 2653

Here the same benchmarks on iPad2 with iOS 8.

Hackability & bugs

It should be possible to unlock the bootloader, but it you do it you’ll lose some camera features like 4K video recording and low-light processing.

It seems some websites with heavy websocket data don’t work well, it happens with stock Chrome browser but also with Firefox (tested with my website #Trenzi, some data aren’t loaded).

Conclusion

I never considered iPhone 6 / iPhone 5s for its price, size and locked ecosystem but somebody consider Sony Z3 Compact a good alternative for its speed in a small factor smartphone.