Performance: Snapdragon 801 (Again)

Inside the Xperia Z2 we once once more find the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC, which I've already taken a await at in three past devices: the HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S5, and Sony'due south companion tablet, the Xperia Z2 Tablet. Qualcomm has been absolutely dominating the high-end ARM chip market over the by few years, so the inclusion of the Snapdragon 801 hither is no surprise.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on the Snapdragon 801 as I've already talked about information technology in item in past reviews, but I will give a quick breakdown of what you'll be getting. In the Xperia Z2 is the MSM8974AB, which isn't the highest-stop SKU, simply it's certainly powerful. What'southward interesting here is that the 8974AB is rated for a maximum clock speed of 2.36 GHz across its 4 Krait 400 CPU cores, however the Xperia Z2 reports a top clock of 2.27 GHz. 90 MHz isn't going to make a huge difference, but it does appear Sony is downclocking the CPU slightly.

Alongside the quad-cadre Krait 400 CPU is the Adreno 330 GPU clocked at 578 MHz; the Hexagon QDSP6V5A DSP; and a 32-bit dual-aqueduct LPDDR3 memory controller clocked at 933 MHz, providing xiv.9 GB/due south of bandwidth. In that location's besides a wealth of connectivity, including Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/due north/ac, Bluetooth four.0, IZAT Gen8B GPS+GLONASS, LTE Category 4, HSPA+, and GSM/Edge. NFC is included in the Xperia Z2, but information technology's offloaded to another fleck.

The Z2 packs in 3 GB of RAM, plus xvi GB of internal storage. 16 GB isn't a huge amount to work with, especially every bit only eleven.57 GB is available out of the box, but luckily you get a microSD carte slot to expand the storage chapters. Even though expandable storage does create some complexities in the fashion Android handles storage, it's preferable to the extortionate rates nearly OEMs charge for college storage in their devices.

Grabbing a 64 GB microSD carte du jour slot can set you back every bit petty as $30 on Amazon, and I'd highly recommend you practise and so if you plan on storing a lot of photos, music or videos on this handset.

As y'all'd expect, performance from the Sony Xperia Z2 is very good. Oddly, Sony uses a live wallpaper on the device by default, which tin give a battery life and functioning hit while using the homescreens. That's not to say the device is laggy while the alive wallpaper is enabled, just when yous switch to a static wallpaper the device feels notably smoother to apply.

Around other areas of the Os, everything is very smooth, and apps load very quickly. 3 GB of RAM seems to accept a modest benefit in that y'all can switch dorsum to older apps without having to reload them fully, which cuts downwardly on app opening times. In that location wasn't a fourth dimension using the Xperia Z2 where I felt the smartphone needed more than ability, even during intense web browsing in Chrome.

Gaming is a similar situation, equally the Xperia Z2 packs a combination that nosotros've seen before. With the Adreno 330 GPU rendering to a 1080p brandish, the vast majority of the games on the Google Play Store will run splendidly. I only ran into hiccups trying to play Grand Theft Car: San Andreas on maximum settings, but you can just turn down the quality slightly to accomplish fluid gameplay.

Throughout the CPU-spring and web benchmarks I performed on the Xperia Z2, it's interesting to note that functioning is largely the same as the Xperia Z1. This isn't too surprising, as both devices accept quad-core Krait 400 CPUs clocked at 2.3 GHz, but some people may have been expecting significant performance gains going Snapdragon 800 to 801.

Really the only master functioning gain you get going from the Xperia Z1 to the Z2 is a minor heave in graphics performance. Across the GPU benchmarks I ran, the average performance boost was 17%, which isn't huge only still notable.

Still, comparing the Xperia Z2 to the year-old Xperia Z with its Snapdragon S4 Pro SoC, the performance of the Z2 is around double that of the Z. If yous're looking for ameliorate operation in your smartphone, upgrading from a yr-old handset like the Xperia Z makes much more than sense than ditching the still-fast Xperia Z1.

Internal NAND performance from the Xperia Z2 is essentially identical to the Xperia Z1, indicating that there's been no change in this hardware between the two devices. I would have liked to encounter Sony improve their storage functioning in the Z2, as it'southward well behind the HTC One M8 and Samsung Galaxy S5.

Merely on the One M8 and Milky way S5, as both devices pack the Snapdragon 801, in that location are no pregnant performance differences betwixt them and the Xperia Z2 (aside from NAND). No thing what device you choose, y'all'll be getting performance that's every bit good as it gets in an Android smartphone.

Sony was never a especially heavy benchmark cheater: on the Z1 and Z1 Meaty, out of the benchmarks I perform only Vellamo was afflicted, where dodgy code present in the device's software boosts the CPU clock speed to its maximum as soon as the benchmark is launched. However with the Xperia Z2, Sony has followed on from Samsung in completely removing this behaviour from their handset.

The lack of cheating lawmaking means that the results higher up for the Z2 can exist trusted every bit a reflection of what you'll expect in terms of real-world functioning. I'm glad that benchmark adulterous was a short-lived exercise, and hopefully soon I won't even accept to mention information technology.

The Xperia Z2 is one of the few handsets I've used recently where I've had some strange behaviour using LTE and Wi-Fi. Occasionally I'll exist trying to load a webpage or refresh an app and aught at all will load, or it takes an unusually long time to load, despite having good signal strength. Speedily switching into airplane mode and back fixes the issue, but I would like to see Sony address the problem through a software update. Luckily, it doesn't happen very oft, then information technology's unlikely to be a persistent annoyance.

Other than the aforementioned effect, I had great network functioning from the in-built LTE Category iv radio, often reaching up to seventy Mbps down on local Australian networks. Wi-Fi was besides capable of streaming Blu-ray content from my local media server, despite how I don't have an 802.11ac router. Equally for other connectivity, GPS was sometimes a tad slow to lock, but I had no bug with Bluetooth iv.0 or NFC.

On the sound forepart, Sony has implemented a few audio features that are geared towards those willing to buy into Sony'south ecosystem. The Xperia Z2 is the "world's first smartphone with digital noise cancelling applied science", but don't be fooled: yous'll demand uniform Sony MDR-NC31EM headphones, which I incertitude many people will ain, especially as they aren't included in the Xperia Z2's box.

As I don't own these headphones, I was unable to exam digital dissonance cancelling. I would have liked to see Sony make digital dissonance cancelling technology uniform with all pairs of headphones with an in-line microphones, where possible, but instead it appears to be a feature more geared towards selling Sony-made accessories.

The Xperia Z2 also supports Sony's Stereo Microphone STM10 accessory for improving the audio quality of videos captured using the phone. An selection in the settings menu allows y'all to switch betwixt using the sound jack for noise cancelling (or regular) headphones, or the STM10. Alongside this characteristic, you'll discover a range of sound enhancement settings such as ClearAudio+, which I prefer leaving disabled.