Sony Xperia Z5 Dual Review: Is the performance and battery at par with rivals?

Sony has a weak history of delivering a good performance combined with an acceptable battery life in a smartphone. In the hope of changing that, Sony unveiled the Xperia Z5 flagship with several improvements. Here's our review of the Xperia Z5 Dual's performance and battery life.

Performance 

The Sony Xperia Z5 performance is on par with several high-end phones in the market. Sony could have improved the processor but the Xperia Z5 is powered by 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC combined with Adreno 430 GPU for graphics and 3GB RAM. The handset comes only in 32GB variant, which is quite suffice, but you can add more storage up to 200GB via microSD cards.

During the entire time we used the handset, we did not face any lag or freezing with usual operations. It is worth mentioning that the heating issue persists while using heavy apps such as high-res games, long-time video calls and extensive camera usage. Thankfully, the handset cools off sooner than its predecessors and a quick water shower will cool off the handset almost instantly.

The Android interface in the Xperia Z5 gives a pretty straightforward experience, with all apps and settings falling in line with the Material Design UI.

The graphics in the games were exceptional and we enjoyed the game (Asphalt 8) to its full potential. There is little to complain about the graphics in the Xperia Z5.

Moving on to the geeky bit of the handset, we have screenshots of the benchmark scores from different apps such as AnTuTu, Vellamo, CF-Bench, Basemark OS II and GeekBench below:

Battery life

Sony did really up the ante as far as battery is concerned. The Xperia Z5 Dual packs a 2,900mAh battery, which supports Quick Charge 2.0 tech. Sony claims the handset can run up to 2 days between charges with mixed usage but we had to plug in the handset once after running a little more than a day. Sony's proprietary Stamina and Ultra Stamina modes are great additions to improve the battery life. By activating the Stamina mode, battery consumption is little to nil during night as it limits all background activities. If you are watching movies or playing games, expect the battery life to drop by a few hours at best.

Verdict

Like every other phone, the Sony Xperia Z5 Dual comes with its own pros and cons. While the handset's performance and camera is worth considering, Sony can really improve a lot on other fronts. Firstly, the handset was released shortly after the Xperia Z3+ and it feels like the Xperia Z5 isn't much of an upgrade. Surely, the processor could be better and the heating issue could be addressed in a much better way.

The Xperia Z5 follows the company's same design as seen in older Xperia phones. Fans would have loved a design overhaul, considering major rivals such as Apple and Samsung are stressing more focus on the design.

Even though fans may oversee a few shortcomings, Sony Xperia Z5 price comes as a major turn off. Priced at Rs. 52,990, shoppers have better options like the Samsung Galaxy S6 for a similar price or even Google Nexus 6P for a much lower price.