[Xperia Z General] XDA mark:
The Netherlands - "Hi" (KPN's little kid, or how should I say) :p

It's exactly what I expected. I posted some first impressions from the XZ I got to use for a few minutes in a store last week in another thread, so I will mostly repeat the same.

- Build quality: excellent, premium, beautiful phone. I have the black XZ and you can see fingerprints on it, though it's not really all that bad. I expected it to get much more dirty. The ports covering everything are good, they don't feel low quality. Though it was kind off hard to keep the port open and put my SIM/Micro SD card in it. Good thing I only do this a few times a year max :) For charging and headphones it's better, those ports are looser (since Sony understand you will use them more). Overall, nothing to complaint about build wise. Excellent.

- Screen: very nice, good enough for me (a phone obsessed maniak which will cry over very small small things). The screen is very very sharp, beautifull and large. I could read text in the zoomed out view in Chrome (gsmarena). The screen is bright and when Bravia Engine 2 kicks in everything looks even better.

- Screen Viewing angles: way better then expected from all the drama. When I look at the pictures on the internet I still can't believe it's the XZ. In real life it's really not that bad. Two of my best friends also got the XZ and when I look at them using it from a good viewing angle, I can see the screen is kind of "grayish" (like there is a privacy filter on it). Though you can still easily see text/content on it, so it's not "bad" that way. It just looks ... "different". I know it sounds weird but I am actually getting used to the way the viewing angles look. Anyway, when actually using the phone yourself (it's close) the viewing angles don't get so bad. It's only from a distance you can see the "grayish" glow. What I also noticed that at extreme viewing angles, it gets better again. So let's say:

Front (0degrees): perfect, no problemms

45degrees: grayish glow

almost 90 degrees: screen looks to get better again.

Conclusion: Let's just say XZ's screen with the "not perfect" viewing angles > S3's screen with great viewing angles. The sharpness, size, beauty of the XZ's screen is really nice. Screw those V.A. Though there is no denying that the HTC One's screen does have better viewing angles (that alone still doesn't make me want to buy the One though)

- Performance: it's blazing fast. I know that it's fresh and devices get slower once you start loading more and more apps on it, but at the moment it's just insanely fast. Really notice a difference with my S3 running CM10.1 (Android 4.2.2, stock AOSP). Chrome opens and closes so fast, everything actually. The only problem: the camera app takes really to long to open. I'm not worried though, this wil be surely fixed by Sony and even more sure by the XDA Dev's. Performance wise: a great device and I see a great future (also because of Sony's good reputation and what the Devs here on XDA will do)

Camera: Great, feels like a step up from the S3. I am no camera expert at all, but I took some pictures and they look nice. At least S3 quality or higher. I have not yet tested a lot, so can't really say. I am pleased with what I saw till now. I actually took a picture of my friends in the casino (low light) and I saw it looked really nice! (my S3 would never have captured such detail, it looked like the room wasn't so dark at all). The only problem: sometimes the device doesn't seem to focus very fast. And again, the camera app itself opens way to slow at the moment.

Battery life: Still to soon to tell, but one of my friends has had the XZ since Saturday. He unplugged the device on one the past days at 9:45 in the morning, at 12:00 his battery dropped from 100% to 99%. He said he listned to about 10 songs, checked facebook & instagram once, and did some other small things. He was connected to wifi most of the time and for the rest to 3G. He actually send me a screenshot (I posted it in the battery life thread). His screen on time was 30minutes: he didn't send a picture of that (though I didn't actually ask for that, stupid me). So he is having great results.

I myself got the device this morning at 10:30. I left the house around 13:35 with 69% battery (didn't get to fully charge it) and came home at 22:15 with the device just turning off. Now I didn't even have the change to fully empty the battery and charge it fully, so I'm really holding any conclusion till later this week. But one thing I noticed: extremly low battery consumption in standby mode (when the screen is off). I whitelisted whatsapp for the record, so that was running normaly. Very nice!

Overall: really happy with the Xperia Z. It wasn't really that a hard decision for me. I wanted a beautiful, premium feeling phone with high end specs and overall all the features I want and need. The Galaxy S4 will never have such a great design/build quality, so that's off my list. The HTC One is excellent build quality wise, but the design I don't like after further inspection. It also doesn't have microsd card support which is a feature I just want, point. UI/skin wise, I also liked the XZ's UI the most (it's really close to stock android). So for me the choise was already made by looking at my options and crossing off the one's that didn't check all the boxes.

The Xperia Z itself is great though, enough talking about the competion not being good enough. It's a good looking, premium phone with high end specs (S4 Pro 1.5GHz + Adreno 320 GPU + 2GB RAM), it's got NFC, 4G, etc etc. It's the best overall package. At least for me it is. I don't regret it at all! (and even if somehow I don't get my free headset worth 250 euro anymore, long story, I still won't regret getting the XZ). Great phone and the other options are not better.

**warning: keep in mind that everybody has different opinions and thoughts, so don't base your purchase on what I have to say alone lol**