Sony Xperia Z5 Compact review: Pint-sized powerhouse wows us all over again

Many years ago, when I announced my plans to buy a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, my friends were astonished that I’d go for anything quite so big. I’d look ridiculous, they claimed, holding that to my face.

Well if I did – and there’s no guarantee the phone was to blame for that – then everyone else is looking silly, too. Nowadays, you’re hard-pushed to find a handset under 5in, and with Sony’s latest flagship arriving at 5.2in (or 5.5in for the truly ridiculous 4K premium model), the “compact” version of it is just 0.6in smaller at 4.6in. If this is compact, the iPhone 4s looks positively adorable.

Still, this is clearly the pocket-sized cut-off point now, and that’s largely a good thing.

Sony Xperia Z5 Compact: First impressions

Out of the box, the Xperia Z5 Compact does indeed look like a cut-down version of the larger handset. Obviously, it’s shorter at 4.6in and, oddly, a touch thicker at 8.9mm compared with the Z5’s slender 7.3mm frame. It’s also quite a bit lighter at 138g to the Z5’s 154g.

Sony’s style hasn’t changed a great deal over the years, and it’s quite a divisive look, with squared-off edges and sharp angles. All smartphones are essentially slabs of electronics, but Sony wears this assessment on its sleeve – and proudly. The Z5 Compact curves its edges off slightly, but it’s still a lot more angular than the iPhone 6s, HTC One M9 or Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge.

As with the Xperia Z5, the back plate is now frosted glass, which looks quite nice, but will probably not survive many encounters with a pocketful of keys. You have been warned. Also, as with the Z5, the power button has changed from Sony’s traditional protruding circle to a flat, metal oval. This is to incorporate a fingerprint scanner, on the right hand side where the thumb naturally sits.

The result is a revelation for me. I’m used to fairly unreliable Bluetooth unlocking with Android Wear, but being able to quickly get to the homescreen with a light touch of the thumb is something I’m going to find very difficult to give up. On the other hand, I’ll certainly not miss the positioning of the volume rocker on this phone: it’s at the bottom right-hand side, which is just weird for the sake of being weird.

One of the major selling points of Xperia phones in recent years has been their waterproofing, with Sony boasting of the ability to shoot video underwater with previous models.

That suggestion has been quietly withdrawn from all Sony’s marketing materials this time around, but the phone retains its IP56/IP68 rating, which means that it’ll withstand a dunking or two.

Sony Xperia Z5 Compact: Screen

With the smaller frame comes a lower resolution screen, with the Xperia Z5 Compact outputting a 720p resolution. Should you be bothered by that? Not really, if my experience is anything to go by. I came to the X5 Compact from the 5in, 1080p HTC One M8 at 441ppi, and it’s quite a drop to the 319ppi of the Sony. But in day-to-day use? I was very impressed: it’s sharp, vibrant, colourful and has very good viewing angles.

However, it didn’t quite reach the same heights as its larger sibling – the Z5 – in our tests, hitting a maximum brightness of 461cd/m2, and a decent (but not spectacular) contrast ratio of 912:1. Its sRGB coverage of 98.8% goes someway to explaining why it looks so good, though.

Sony Xperia Z5 Compact: Performance

Size and price aside, the real difference between the mini versions of flagship handsets tends to be performance, with manufacturers often selling significantly worse smartphones under the same branding as the flagship (I’m looking at you, HTC one mini).

To Sony’s credit, this isn’t the case with the Z5 Compact. Packing a nearly identical specification into its smaller frame as the Sony Xperia Z5, this really is a miniaturised flagship, and the performance proves that.

Both phones have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 chipset and Adreno 430 graphics chip, although the Compact does have 1GB RAM less to play with. But this doesn’t have a negative impact on performance.

In fact, due to the lower resolution 720p display, the Z5 Compact was faster in the gaming tests, returning 58fps on the GFXBench T-Rex HD onscreen test and 35fps on the Manhattan onscreen test. This is slightly ahead of the Z5.

In the CPU-only Geekbench 3 tests, the results were – understandably – a lot closer, with the Z5 Compact scoring 1,345 to the Z5’s 1,236 in the single-core test and 3,747 to the Z5’s 3,943 in the multi-core test.

Performance is generally swift as the specifications and benchmarks suggest, with games flying along at a full rate of knots. Despite this, there were times when the Z5 Compact seemed a touch on the laggy side – for example, when switching between apps and when the keyboard took a moment to emerge. You come to expect this kind of thing after a few months of living with Android, but after only a week’s use, I’d hoped the honeymoon period wouldn’t end quite so abruptly.

Sony Xperia Z5 Compact: Camera

Again, as the specifications between the two cheaper Z5s are virtually identical, the camera performance is the same. As Jon said in his Z5 review, it’s very good indeed.

The Exmor RS rear camera is a 23-megapixel snapper, with a sensor size of 1/2.3in and including SteadyShot optical image stabilisation. The autofocus is said to work in 0.03 seconds, and you can tap anywhere on the screen to focus.

The results are excellent: contrast, colours and detail are all superb, and given it’s the same camera in a smaller package, you may find that the Compact offers a preferable photography experience over its more expensive sibling. That said, the results won’t look quite so impressive on the smaller screen.

As for video, the Z5 Compact shoots in up to 4K, just like the bigger Z5. The stabilisation is excellent, smoothing out even violent handshake and judder to deliver a stable, professional-looking result.

Sony Xperia Z5 Compact: Battery life

Sony has long been proud of the battery life its Xperia phones offer, and it can once again be pretty chuffed here. The Compact, Sony claims, delivers up to two days of battery life, which clears the “one day minimum” and then some. In my experience, this did seem possible, but you’ll only get there if you use the phone lightly. On days when you’re playing games, or watching streaming video a fair bit, you’re likely to need a nighttime charge – just to be on the safe side.

Indeed, when playing a 720p video in Flight mode with the screen set to a brightness level of 120cd/m2, the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact drained its battery at a rate of 8% per hour, which isn’t especially notable. Likewise, streaming an hour-long podcast over 4G with the screen off saw a drain of 4%. Again good, but far from the best.

When it’s idle, however, the percentage dial barely moves. As with its larger sibling, Sony’s battery management is all engaged by default and it works overtime to ensure it reduces the battery load wherever it can. Throughout the week, this mostly coped fine, but it did have a couple of issues with Rdio cutting out when I flicked the screen off, if I did so too quickly, and my Moto 360 running Runkeeper through the phone cut out after around a kilometre, presumably when the Z5 Compact decided to down tools for longer battery life.

Sony Xperia Z5 Compact: Final thoughts

I was having a conversation with someone recently about why Sony’s phones don’t have a better reputation. It’s the only big manufacturer that has independent business strands dedicated to phones, TVs, cameras, gaming, computing and music, so by all rights, its phones should dominate.

The Z5 Compact is a step in that direction. In its more compact frame, it barely puts a foot wrong, with a super camera, generally zippy performance, a decent screen and impressive battery life. The side-mounted fingerprint reader is also a genuinely brilliant innovation that you can expect other manufacturers to steal over the next few years.

It’s a clear winner, and if you’re after a handset that reduces the bulk without compromising on performance or squeezing in the latest tech, there really is no alternative.