SONY XPERIA Z ULTRA
The Xperia Z Ultra follows the same design aesthetic as Sony’s Xperia Z smartphone and tablet, with a waterproof, ultra-sleek design that makes it, by far, the best looking device in this comparison.
Measuring just 6.5mm thin, the Xperia Z Ultra is the world’s slimmest Full-HD smartphone. Its closest competitor in this aspect is the 6.9mm thin Lenovo K900. Considering that Sony could still fit in a 6.44-inch display onto such a thin body is another impressive feat. The slim form factor makes it a tad easier to handle than the other phablets, but ultimately, it is hard to ignore the massive dimensions of any of the five compared.
Although Sony uses the same TFT LCD display construction as the Xperia Z smartphone, the Xperia Z Ultra’s screen has none of the limitations prevalent on earlier Xperia devices. To start, viewing angles are far better, and the whitewashed display effect is pretty much gone, likely thanks to Sony’s Triluminos screen technology and X-Reality display processing engine. If anything, the viewing experience is one of the best we’ve seen yet, with vivid colors and excellent contrast.
“MEASURING JUST 6.5MM THIN, THE XPERIA Z ULTRA IS THE WORLD’S SLIMMEST FULL-HD
SMARTPHONE.”
Being one of the newer devices in this shootout, the Xperia Z Ultra comes with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core 2.2GHz processor, and 2GB of RAM. Coupled with an almost-stock Android 4.2 user interface, we find user navigation on the Xperia Z Ultra to be a breeze.
Sony has added a couple of tweaks to the Android interface, such as Small Apps (also present on the Xperia Tablet S/Z, Xperia Z/SP) and Activ eClip. Active Clip functions similarly to Samsung’s S Note app and LG’s QuickMemo, where you take a screenshot and personalize it with a variety of tools. Similar to the Ascend Mate and Optimus G Pro, the Xperia Z Ultra has support for one-handed usage.
The Xperia Z Ultra has 16GB built-in storage and has a micro-SD card slot for memory expansion up to 64GB. Like the Ascend Mate, it sports a nonremovable battery.