You’ve got to love Sony’s compact smartphones, pretty much all the specs of their bigger siblings but contained in a more pocket-friendly size. Sony’s Xperia Compact smartphones have been a big hit and have proved that you don’t have to sacrifice style, features and specs just because you prefer a smaller handset.
Sony have recently launched their latest compact smartphone, the Sony Xperia Z3. In case you were wondering there wasn’t a Z2 compact version so here’s our comparison between the original Z1 Compact and the Xperia Z3 Compact.
Design & Display
As you would expect a newer Sony smartphone means a slimmer, lighter and sleeker design. The Z3 Compact is almost a millimetre thinner at 8.6mm deep and weighs in at 129 grams whereas the Z1 Compact is 9.5mm thick and weighs 137 grams.
The design has been tweaked with the Z3 sporting toughened nylon corners and it has a higher dust and water resistant rating – IP68 opposed to IP55. There’s also a new colour range for the Z3 Compact which is available in black, white, green and orange. The Z3 Compact comes with a larger 4.6-inch screen than its Z1 Compact predecessor which had a 4.3-inch screen. Both handsets have a screen resolution of 720p with the Z1 Compact actually having a higher pixel density of 341ppi compared to 319ppi.
Camera
The cameras on both the Sony Compact smartphones are very impressive as they feature a 20.7-megapixel camera complete with Sony Exmor RS sensor on the rear. The Z3 Compact does have a couple of added extras including a 25mm wide-angle lens and a superior ISO. On the front of the Z1 Compact is a decent 2-megapixel snapper, whereas the Z3 Compact has a 2.2-megapixel camera.
Power and Battery
The Xperia Z3 Compact boasts the latest quad-core Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. The Z1 Compact is hardly a slouch with a Snapdragon 800 quad-core 2.2GHz CPU together with 2GB of RAM.
Both smartphones come with 16GB of onboard storage and include a microSD slot. The Z1 can support a 64GB microSD card whilst the Z3 Compact can take a 128GB card. In terms of connectivity, the Z1 and Z3 Compacts are 4G compatible with the Z3 Compact capable of taking advantage of faster WiFi (11ac category). Both handsets have powerful batteries, the Z1 Compact boasts a 2300mAh power pack compared to the 2600mAh inside the Z3 Compact. On average this would give the smartphones around 12 hours of talk time on 3G and approx 100 hours of music playback.
