A sound experience

Sony’s new flagship in the Xperia range is the Xperia XZ2. Like many of the Xperia phones, this device is geared for an immersive multimedia experience — it has a bright, sharp display and solid speaker output, with what Sony promises are its loudest Xperia speakers yet.

The device itself is a beautiful sleek handset, but it has a fair bit of heft to it. It’s got a metal and glass finish (Corning Gorilla Glass 5), and is splash proof. In terms of colour, you can choose between liquid silver, liquid black, deep green and ash pink. The green is particularly striking.

The XZ2 has a 5.7-inch fullhd screen. Paired with quality speakers, it makes for great media playback.

The XZ2 up-scales nonhdr content so you can make the most of video streaming on your mobile.

The camera also has serious specs: it is capable of 4K HDR movie recording and fullhd 960-frame-per-second “super-slow-motion” capture.

For stills, it has some smart add-ons, including predictive capture, predictive autofocus and smile detection.

And though you are unlikely to need 3D scanning often, the 3D Creator app is cool, if a bit gimmicky. It allows you to scan objects, or faces for use as 3D avatars.

Under the hood, there’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip (as found in competitors such as the Samsung Galaxy S9) and second-generation gigabit LTE for fast downloads. It ships with Android 8.0 Oreo installed. The large battery (3,180 mah) has great standby time, and lasted a full day with average use.

Overall, this is a sophisticated-looking phone that will more than handle the everyday tasks you throw at it — and at R13,499, it won’t break the bank. There is also an XZ2 Compact model that’s lighter on specs and your pocket.