Friday, October 1, 2021

phone 31 – sony xperia z ultra


another phone as a loan collateral. most phones i acquired (yes, considered all loan collateral as such) in 2021 are, anyway. this was released in 2013, like the sony xperia sp, nokia lumia 1020, asus fonepad note fhd6, and htc desire 200. so, it took me about 8 years before having it.

i was informed that it is refurbished, too. quite obvious on the body. the back glass panel seemed to be some millimeter short to fit on the frame and dried adhesives are visible. flaps do not fit well. did it change the experience? i am not sure since i have no xperia z ultra way back when it was released. but, read on as i mention some things that affected the experience on the use cases under my battery testing.

speaking of battery testing, the phone was fully charged for a little over 4 hours. it managed to last for a day and 40 minutes. 5 hours and 40 minutes of which is screen on time.

battery score card


music play is fine. the placement of the loudspeaker just missed the opportunity of making this phone immersive, at least on the audio side. the mono down firing loudspeaker is loud enough but i wish they went for a stereo front firing speaker. quality is good as well. and as for all xperia handsets with flagship specifications, bluetooth wireless and 3.5mm wired audio is impressive.

web browsing is also a nice experience on this phone with its large 6.4 inches display at 16:9 aspect ratio. it would be a nice alternative as an ereader, if you are okay with it not being on 4:3 aspect ratio. texts and images are crisp. even sharper than 14 inches laptop with 1080p resolution. loading of pages is fast enough including the navigation.

casual games are handled nicely as well. lags are not obvious when playing subway surfer. it might handle some modern games in 2021, as long as those are not needing much raw power and graphics. game play is also immersive with such display size, but you have to settle with wired audio, since the loudspeaker is, again, not that immersive being single downfiring.

photo shoots and video recording are not the strength of this phone. especially on dark scenes, since it does not even have an led flash. low light performance is also weak. on daylight, at least i can say that the resulting shots and videos are usable. include here, a selfie camera that also performs okayish.

for video play, that loudspeaker placement, again decreases the immersive experience the phone should have. the display is excellent. you can bump the contrast and saturation if you want to. but colors are already good by default. it really resembles sony tv when placed on table. viewing angles are also good for sharing movie time to about 2-3 people.

there are a lot of things to love about this phone, even considering that this phone is a refurbished one. if only it has a stereo front firing loudspeaker, it would be an equal alternative to my asus fonepad note fhd6 for some small group movie time. there are some issues i found on it though. one is on the display. when unlocking the phone, it is either images will not emerge, just the backlight, or it flickers for some time. second, the touchscreen is quite inconsistent. it is not as bad as the xperia sp. include to that the capability to use a pencil. while using a pencil on the sketch app, there are times when the input on a certain part of the touchscreen is not processed. at times, when writing, using a pencil, lines are cut on some places.

in 2021, this phone might still be of good use. with online classes and work from home setup, this is good enough. it can also be nice as an extra device to handle music play and movie time on the side.

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