[Xperia Z1 General] 1337rice:
First off, I wouldn't have gotten the Z1 if I didn't permanently brick my Xperia TX, which was doing an adequate job. I never planned to replace it until I renew my contract in 6 months, by then I would decide what would be available that's worth purchasing...my service provider has a ok to mediocre line up (Galaxy S4, HTC Desire, Motorola X, Nexus 5, Xperia SP), but none of them were interesting to keep.

Long story short, I tried to install a 3rd party ROM for the TX, only to have the screen flip upside down, later screwed up to the point where even the Sony logo does not even appear. It would constantly be stuck in Flash mode and it wouldn't even let you flash the stock firmware. Since the TX is not a Canadian phone, heck, it wouldn't even matter.

So I walked into the Sony Store and got myself a white Xperia Z1 C6906. Sales rep tried to sell me the magnetic charging dock, but I'm not too sure whether it's worth it. I looked at ebay and there seems to be a magnetic charging cable.

Build quality:

Since I had a chance to use a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 for a moment, I can say that the Z1 has a more "solid" feeling to it. I wouldn't say that it's impressive that the Note 3 manages to weigh around the same as the smaller Z1, despite having the bigger screen and slightly bigger battery. The plastic/leather?/aluminium? was the key to save weight. I'm sure if they used the same materials as the Z1, it would be around 185-200g.

Since the Z1 is built like an iPhone, using "premium" materials, there's a certain catch to it. Fragile.

When I got my iPhone 4, the first thing I got was a case to prevent permanent damage to its fragile product. This is the problem with the Z1 as well. Using glass as the front and back could end up from being one of the most beautiful phones into shattered glass. There is a shatter-proof sheet, but that doesn't mean anything. At the end of the day, you would still go out and buy a case, cover it up, end of discussion. You can't really see what the phone looks like anymore.

Now compared to last year's flagship, the T/TX, this is a huge jump. The plastic isn't bad, but plastic is plastic.

Button layout has been revamped, it certainly fits better with your fingers, where it should be naturally. However, I prefer the camera button to be bigger.

Hardware

Apples and oranges.

The T/TX had 1GB of RAM powered by an outdated Snapdragon S4. It performed about the same, if not, better than the Galaxy S3, but those were just benchmarks and they were already a good 6 months too late because the S4 was just announced...adding salt to the wound, the Z was also announced later on.

Compared to my TX, the Z1 just snaps through everything. Pictures load quick, Facebook doesn't lag to refresh news feed, none or barely any stutter in the animations, camera operates smooth, Walkman doesn't stutter it's audio, it just FLOWS.

LED notification is more noticeable than that puny dot on the corner on the T/TX.

The screen I got turns out to be the VA panel, ...why am I not surprised? But I don't have anything to complain as it still looks great, and the bad viewing angles will prevent other people from taking a peek at what I'm doing. Jumping from a 4.6 inch to a 5 inch with more pixels, everything looks sharper. I can't say much about the colour since I think it looks about the same in comparison.

Everyone says built-in battery is a problem, I personally find it to be the only Samsung fanboy argument as the importance of a removable battery is really insignificant. My TX has removable battery, but I never really had to take it out.

The only problem that I have is sound.

No rumoured S-Master MX DAC. I have a Walkman Z, and it sounds tremendous when paired with the Sony XBA-3 along with DSEE, Clear Stereo, and Clear Phase turned on, no equalizer adjustments needed.

For the Z1, volume is weak, bass too dull, vocals too tinny. Turning on ClearAudio+ and Dynamic Normalizer makes it worse. Clear Stereo is ok to use. Other than that, equalizer adjustment is highly recommended to fix this.

As for the speakers, I'm leaning more on the "I don't like it" side. Like the iPhone, the speaker grille for this is an absolute aesthetic b.s.

It isn't loud, nor is it very clear. It sounds slightly muffled, and feels like it came out of 320p YouTube when that's clearly not the case when it's played on headphones. At least they got the speaker placement correct...

Software:

Everything pretty much looks the same minus the camera interface. I've always like the Timescape UI better than any other ones out there so no complaints there. Camera quick-launch makes that funny music when turned on, I personally don't like it. They didn't do it with the T/TX, so why would they add it on now? Please don't say it's to warn the user that your camera function is turned on...at least make it like iPhone's auto turn off if no action has been done. I don't know if Android or Sony has such a function, but I know there is a fix here on xda to get rid of that.

Of course, that's up to whether the user wants to root or not.

As for the X-Reality engine, I would personally leave it off for the following reasons:

Over sharpened video - this seems to occur on some videos, it might be due to the codec or it might be due to its resolution. Leaving it off results in a natural video. Turning the engine on results in some funny white outlines popping everywhere including subtitle text that's just way too harsh to watch. However, playing the factory demo clips like The Smurfs 2 trailer shows no harsh sharpening.

Deceiving images - Everything might look great through that saturated and sharpen filter, but once you put it on the PC, it looks nothing like it anyways. Just like the TX's Bravia Engine, it doesn't improve on anything. If you like this sort of stuff, by all means, leave it on.

Camera

I haven't tested the camera too thoroughly to see how much of an improvement over an Exmor R sensor. The interface and functionality is much better than the TX thanks to better hardware. Picture file size says a lot, and 20 megapixels with only an average 5mb file size tells me there's not much detail being captured. Just like the TX's 13 megapixels, an average file size of 2mb is really disappointing when a 5 megapixel iPhone 4 can churn out pretty much the same thing, if not, better.

Low light has improved drastically thanks to the bigger sensor, but noise reduction seems too harsh or non-existent at times.

The hardware is there, but the software is certainly not making up for it.

Overall

From a hardware standpoint, most of the stuff is great. CPU/GPU is up-to-date, battery size is comparable to the giant Note 3 (not sure about usage though), you get the idea. The stuff about the screen not being PLS or IPS, well, if you're lucky, then consider it a bonus. The VA panel does more than enough if you stare right at it, colour reproduction might not be as good as IPS/PLS, but VA is considered a close contender.

From a software standpoint, if you have been using the previous generation T/TX, nothing should be unexpected as there are no drastic changes that require you to read the manual or anything. Since this phone is still relatively new, its also unsurprising that 3rd party development lacks compared to the insta-popular S4 and Note 3 where there are just pages of stuff to go through. If you don't mod, it's already pretty decent at its stock form.

Price is probably the only killer. $699 Canadian is steep. Yes, Rogers sells it for $599, but I want white and I don't use Bell or Telus, so suck it.

Contract price goes for much less...but it's contract price, ain't nobody got time for that.

With that money, you're open to a lot of top-end options like the Note 3, G2, even the Nexus 5 which is half the price of this. With CES just around the corner, prices will start dropping soon.

Nonetheless, it's still an excellent phone. Now I'm off to buy the Spigen GLAS.tR SLIM from Japan :D