We were recently at a Sony Mobile event in Dublin that showcased some of Son’y upcoming devices and one of the main attractions was of course the recently announced Xperia Z Ultra. We did get some hands on time with the device and have a few things to say about the upcoming phablet, however first off take a look at the quick hands-on video that was demoed by Sony’s Peter Haplin.
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Display
The Xperia Z Ultra has specs that would catch anyone’s eye, the 6.44-inch full 1080p Triluminos display is obviously one of the biggest stand outs compared to other devices. phone/tablet devices aren’t new to the market but the Z Ultra is really bring the differences closer to the tablet side of things, with the popular Nexus 7 being barely over a half an inch bigger, the question really comes to mind, is the Z Ultra just a tablet with phone capabilities. The answer is simply a no, it’s just another big phone.
It shouldn’t come as a shock that phones are getting bigger. While tablets have been around for decades, only recently they were just smartphones on the inside with bigger display’s, obliviously most lacking call functionally. The above image taken at the event shows the Xperia Z, Xperia Xperia Z Ultra and finally the Xperia Z Tablet. The Xperia Z Ultra is clearly closer to it’s phone sibling than compared to the tablet.
While the Xperia Z Ultra is a big device, it’s something different and to be honest, the smartphone side of things have needed it. Over a year ago we had the Galaxy Note series arrive with the 5.3-inch display and that was met with some shock, however now the standard for the Xperia Z and Galaxy S4 is 5.-inches. So bigger devices are clearly what the people wanted. So perhaps the 6.44-inch device is aimed and those that love having a tablet sized display but still portable enough to actually use it everyday.
Performance
The Xperia Z Ultra isn’t just planning on being full of shock based on it’s size, because it also packs Qualcomm latest and greatest Snapdragon 800 chipset. Clocked at 2.2GHZ the quad-core CPU is nothing short of a beast. Running with 2GB of ram it should easily handle all the apps. We did get a look at much gaming on the device, but we did take a look at some HD playback and it looked amazing. Also we need to keep some fun things for the review closer to the release.
So to wrap up this rather interesting hands on experience we can easily say that we are deeply looking forward to the launch of the Xperia Z Ultra and really putting it to the test. Sony did an amazing job bringing over the water resistant features of the Xperia Z and improving on them somewhat with no longer needing a flap on the 3.5mm jack and both the micro sd and micro sim being under the same flap, it makes the negatives of having a water proof device less of an impact.
The performance will also be something to look forward to considering we are looking at the latest Snapdragon 800 chipset from Qualcomm. The launch of another over the top screen size is something to look forward to as well as it gives us on idea of what users really want from the smart phones, be it a massive display, top of the line performance and the latest version of Android. The Xperia Z Ultra will have a lot of offer.
