The major news on the mobile from Sony at 2014’s Consumer Electronics Show was the announcement of the Z1 Compact, a smartphone that looks to pack most of the features of the company’s recent Xperia flagship phones into a device with a smaller 4.3 inch screen.
The other phone announcement form the show floor of Sony’s CES booth in Las Vegas was the imminent U.S. availability of the company’s 5-inch-screen Z1, which launched internationally last September, but will finally be coming to T-Mobile stores as the Xperia Z1S (yes, the S is little, but we’ll be calling it the Z1S from here on out).
The Xperia Z1S, which will be available in T-Mobile stores on January 22, has been tweaked from the global Z1 in cooperation with T-Mobile to better fit the U.S. market. The main difference here is a step up to 32GB of internal storage (plus a MicroSD expansion slot). The headphone jack has also been moved from the top left edge to near the center.
There are also some T-Mobile-exclusive camera presets, and the phone comes pre-loaded with the PlayStation app store and the company’s Xperia camera apps, which Sony says is a first for a carrier-specific Xperia phone in the United States.
After spending about a week with the phone, running around Las Vegas, first covering tech announcements and then spending a few days sightseeing, we came away impressed with the Z1S. Its specs aren’t bleeding edge, but they’re about what we’d expect from a high-end smartphone here in the early days of 2014.
It’s the camera, though, that’s the real standout feature. Sony is billing the 20.7-megapixel sensor as “the best camera in a waterproof smartphone.” Frankly, we think that’s selling the sensor a bit short. After shooting hundreds of pictures with it here in Las Vegas, we’d say the Z1S’camera is likely the best you’ll find in an Android phone today. Its performance in low light in particular, is the best we’ve seen from any smartphone, period (save maybe for the 41-megapixel Lumia 1020).
Style of Xperia Z1S
If you’ve seen photos of the Z1, then you’ve seen the Z1S. The phone sports the familiar Xperia styling, similar to the Xperia Z, but with more of a two-toned look around the edges. Sony’s iconic silver power button still sits halfway up the right side, with flaps covering all the ports (save for the headphone jack), which makes the Z1S waterproof to beyond one meter (IP55 and IP58).
You’ll have to fiddle with the waterproof flaps fairly often, mostly when charging the phone.
The waterproof flaps are a mixed bag, though, as you’ll have to fiddle with them fairly often, mostly when charging the phone (via Micro USB). And this can certainly be annoying if you come home really late and want to plug your phone in so you can go to bed. Sony will be happy to sell you a charging dock that connects via two pins on the left side of the phone, but unless you only ever charge your phone at home, you’re still probably going to find the flaps annoying at some point. We’d really like to see Sony find a way to make the Micro USB port waterproof without the flap, the same way it did with the headphone jack.
And because the phone’s internals are sandwiched between two pieces of glossy glass, the Z1S is a fingerprint and grease magnet. So be prepared to be wiping it down a lot if you want the phone to look its best.
Not just an impressive megapixel count
The camera and the phone’s waterproof abilities are the Xperia Z1S’s main selling points, and the specs sound pretty great. The smartphone sports an impressive 20.7-megapixel sensor, which Sony says is a large 2.3 inches, combined with the company’s G lens and, thankfully, an LED flash, which the larger Z Ultra lacked.
Aside from the fancy sounding optics, there’s also a dedicated shutter button in the right corner – a nice feature for a camera-focused phone. But the button is small and a bit too stiff for our liking, so we mostly stuck to tapping the on-screen shutter button.
As for the Z1S’ imaging abilities under less taxing lighting conditions, the camera delivers on that front as well, but doesn’t break much ground. The images we took in and around the Las Vegas Strip looked very good, with a bit less noise than we’re used to, thanks likely to the fact that the Intelligent Auto setting down samples the 20.7-megapixel images to a more manageable 8 megapixels. You can use manual settings as well to get larger images, but suspect most users will be happy sticking to the auto settings.
It’s also worth noting that the Z1S’s camera is very fast and quick to focus. The auto-focus didn’t always get things right, but it worked fine far more often than not.
Typical superphone specs
Internally, the Xperia Z1S sounds like what we’d expect from a high-end smartphone in early 2014. The Z1S has a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor and 2GB of RAM to go along with the expandable 32GB of storage. We don’t put much stock in smartphone benchmarks these days, since it’s been revealed that several companies (Samsung and HTC, perhaps others) tweaked their chips to deliver more impressive numbers. But for the record, the Z1S’s Quadrant score of 19,395 isn’t far behind Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3, which managed to break 20,000. The Note 3’s score, though, may be aided by the fact that it has 3GB of RAM.
There are several recent high-end Android phones with similar specs to the Z1S, but you won’t likely find anything significantly more powerful until we get a lot closer to May, when Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 805 is expected to arrive.
The Z1S’ 5-inch screen also looks good, sporting an expected 1080p resolution. Sony says it has borrowed its HDTV line’s Triluminos display tech, as well as an X-Reality image processing engine (essentially a form of upscaling), although we’re told the latter is turned off by default to save battery life.
Anecdotally, the screen looks great, but doesn’t noticeably stand out from other high-end smartphone screens we’ve seen lately. We will say, though, that we didn’t notice the same issues with the Z1S’s screen washing out in direct sunlight as we did with the larger Z Ultra. With the automatic brightness setting enabled, the phone was about as readable outside as our Galaxy S4.
Battery life is (finally) good enough
Fairly short battery life was a problem for both the original Xperia Z and the larger Z Ultra. We’re happy to say it seems that Sony has fixed this with the Z1S. We wouldn’t say battery life is great, but there’s really little to complain about this time, given that the phone is just 8.5mm thick.
During a very busy day sightseeing on the Las Vegas Strip, we took over three hundred photos, uploaded several to Facebook over 4G, sent a few texts, and spent an hour or so surfing the Web. At the end of the day, the Z1S still showed 30 percent of its battery remaining when we went to bed after 15-and-a-half hours. Unless you’re an extremely heavy smartphone user (or you’re covering an event like CES), the Z1S should easily be able to last a whole day. Many users will get about a day-and-a-half of use before having to recharge the phone. That’s not the kind of battery life that we got with the Galaxy Note 3, but it’s pretty good – especially since Sony’s other recent phones have been rather disappointing on the battery front.
Highs
- Impressive camera, especially in low light
- Waterproof
- Slim, stylish design
- Nice screen
Lows
- Poorly placed speaker
- Underwater camera ability seems niche
- Splashing water activates touchscreen
- Design attracts fingerprints and smudges
Key Features
| Features | Touchscreen, Front-facing camera, External storage, High resolution camera, HD video recording, 4G |
Release Information
| Release date | 12/2013 |
| Release price | None at this time |
Software
| Operating system | Android |
| Launch OS version | 4.2 |
| Proprietary skin | None |
Design
| Thickness | .37" |
| Height | 5" |
| Width | 2.56" |
| Weight | Unknown |
| Color | Black |
| Keyboard type | Touchscreen only |
Display
| Screen size | 5" |
| Resolution | 1080p |
| Technology | IPS LCD |
| PPI | Unknown |
| Touchscreen type | Capacitive |
| Multitouch | Yes |
Connectivity
| Carrier | T-Mobile |
| 4G (LTE/HSPA+) | Yes |
| 3G (HSPDA/CDMA) | Yes |
| Edge/2G (GSM/GPRS) | Yes |
| Bluetooth version | 4.0 |
| Wi-fi | Yes |
| Mobile hotspot tethering | Yes |
| NFC support | Yes |
Processor
| Manufacturer | Qualcomm |
| Brand | Snapdragon 800 |
| Speed | 2 GHz |
| Number of cores | 4 |
Memory
| System memory | 2 GB |
Storage
| Internal | 32 GB |
| External type | microSD |
| Max. external storage | 64 GB |
Video
| Front camera recording resolution | 1080p |
| Rear camera recording resolution | 1080p |
| Video codecs supported | Unknown |
Camera
| Front camera photo resolution | 2 megapixels |
| Rear camera photo resolution | 20.7 megapixels |
| Flash | LED |
Ports
| Headphone connection | Yes |
| Charging connection | microUSB |
| Interfaces | None |
Sensors
| Sensors | Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity, Compass |
Battery
| Talk time | Unknown |
| Standby time | Unknown |
| Battery capacity | 2300 mAh |
| Battery chemistry | Lithium Ion |
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