[Xperia Z3 General] tardis_42:
Just got my Z3 today and unlocked immediately. I thought about waiting for TA backup to be possible, but I honestly couldn't picture myself ever re-locking, so I figured the feature sacrifice would be a one-way trip anyway.

Plenty of threads have been started with regard to the degradation in camera quality, here and elsewhere, but tests of other effects of unlocking aren't so easy to find, so I thought I'd contribute a few. I went through a bunch of tests before I unlocked and again afterwards.

First, audio:

I used my old Nexus 5 to measure volume. Ambient sound in the room measured approximately 30db. I loaded up a FLAC file ripped from a CD and played it on maximum volume through the speakers with my Nex5's mic positioned right over the screen, then through my headphones with one headphone held directly up to the mic.

With default settings, speakers measured at 81db and headphones measured 75 on both locked and unlocked bootloader.

I then went into sound settings and activated ClearAudio, which optimizes all sound options automatically. Both locked and unlocked, this resulted in much richer sound. Volume stayed the same on speakers but went up to 78db with headphones, again both locked and unlocked.

Both locked and unlocked, VPT Surround Settings made a huge difference with headphones - "concert hall" mode sounds amazing when listening to orchestral music - but made no discernible difference to sound when using speakers.

S-Force Front Surround made no difference to headphone sound when locked or unlocked. When locked, S-Force produced a louder and richer sound through speakers. I have no way to test this objectively, but it is my feeling that S-Force has the same effect on volume, but a reduced effect on richness/clarity, when unlocked.

In both locked and unlocked states, Dynamic normalizer boosts quiet sounds closer to the level of loud ones.

Conclusion: the only difference between sound from a locked Z3 and sound from an unlocked one appears to be a reduction in the improvement in sound quality through front speakers when S-Force is activated. Note that it is still improved, just not as much. Also note that it is only the front speakers which are affected; the listening experience through headphones is exactly the same locked and unlocked.

To test image effects, I loaded a few high-res photos onto the device and photographed the display with my camera. I kept shutterspeed, aperture, white balance, and ISO settings constant to eliminate those as variables. The results from all my test images were essentially the same, so I'm just going to upload the one that seems to have photographed best. The first image below is a comparison between "off", "X-Reality", and "Super-vivid" image modes with the bootloader locked; the second is a comparison between these modes with the bootloader unlocked.

Note: unfortunately I am not yet allowed to post links. The images can be found at imgur [dot] com [slash] WfbgHBd (locked) and imgur [dot] com [slash] jcZFvde (unlocked).

As you can see, X-Reality makes very little difference - I find it mostly helps to make yellows and greens a bit more vivid - but "Super-vivid" mode lives up to its name. It not only increases color vividness, it does something to reduce dynamic range as well, particularly in terms of brightening up shadows. I find it very artificial-looking and while it made other images (I had another test image of an aurora) noticeably more impressive, I would never leave it on full-time. With the bootloader unlocked, these options do absolutely nothing. All three versions of the image are identical.

Conclusion: "X-Reality" and "Super-vivid" modes are completely disabled when the bootloader is unlocked.

If you're weighing the options, ultimately, I'd suggest you consider only the low-light camera performance question; the audio change is minimal at most, and the change in the display is minor. The screen is still better by far than my Nex5.

Hope this has helped someone!