Sony Xperia Z3 Compact review: The small phone that does it all

Sony’s Xperia Z1 Compact was one of our favourite phones of early 2014, squeezing big performance into a lightweight, water-resistant chassis, and it’s aiming to continue in the same vein with the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact.

Design

It’s endearingly petite compared to modern flagship phones, with a screen that measures 4.6in across the diagonal helping to make for a very pocketable handset. Design-wise it’s reasonably attractive, too, with curved edges clad in translucent plastic, a glossy flat back and “shatterproof glass” up front. The Z3’s sturdy-feeling body isn’t the slimmest out there – it measures a chunky 8.7mm thick – but despite a screen that’s only the tiniest bit smaller than Apple’s iPhone 6, the Z3 feels markedly more compact (it’s actually 11mm shorter), and it’s just as light, weighing 129g.

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We weren’t particularly keen on the slightly unpleasant green colour of our review unit, but the good news is that you can also buy it in the much more palatable shades of red, black and white. Its design is more than just distinctive – it’s also seriously tough. A pair of flaps on the left edge seals the ports, giving the Z3 its IP68 water- and dust-resistant status, and as with other high-end Xperia devices, you can dunk the Z3 Compact in up to a metre of water for 30 minutes. This is a phone that can easily shrug off rain showers, sweat and accidental tea spillages.

Beneath those flaps, there’s a decent level of connectivity, too: the upper flap covers the phone’s micro-USB port and microSD slot, which allows up to 128GB of extra storage to be added; the other conceals the handset’s nano-SIM tray. In general it’s an excellent, no-nonsense design: light, robust, pocketable and usable one-handed. There’s even a dedicated camera button, making it simple to fire off quick snaps.

Features and specifications

The Z3 Compact matches its sensible design with top-of-the-line features and components. Where most smaller smartphones sacrifice performance, the Z3 Compact makes no such compromise, matching its bigger brother, the 5.2in Xperia Z3, blow for blow.

The processor is a quad-core 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, as fast as you’ll find in any Android phone currently, which is coupled with 2GB of RAM, an Adreno 330 CPU and 16GB of storage.

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The rear camera’s 1/2.3in sensor captures 20.7-megapixel stills and 4K video at 30fps (1080p is shot at 60fps), and there’s a 1/8th speed slow-motion mode to match the iPhone 6.

Elsewhere, the Z3 Compact has most other bases covered as well. There’s Cat4 4G support for downloads of up to 150Mbits/sec, Bluetooth 4, NFC and dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Even the battery is big: Sony has squeezed in a 2,600mAh unit – a remarkable feat in a phone so small.

A screen resolution of 720 x 1,280 isn’t a match for larger rivals, which tend to have Full HD displays or higher. Due to its smaller size, though, the pixel density is perfectly respectable. Its 319ppi delivers onscreen images that look just as sharp as they do on the iPhone 6 (327ppi).

There are some areas in which the Z3 Compact lags behind the very best, but fortunately these aren’t hugely critical. It has no infrared transmitter, no heart-rate monitor, no fingerprint reader, and the camera doesn’t have phase-detect autofocus, using only the slower contrast-detect method.

Performance and camera

The upshot of squeezing such powerful hardware into a compact, 720p phone is that it performs like a rocket. In the most demanding of the benchmarks we run on phones – the GFXBench T-Rex HD gaming test – the Z3 Compact delivered a frame rate of 41.2fps, slightly faster than the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. Only the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are significantly quicker.

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Its browser results were less than stellar, with 825ms in SunSpider and 913 in Peacekeeper, but scores of 927 and 2,602 in the single- and multi-core parts of the CPU-focused Geekbench 3 test were superb, and equal to most Android challengers. Once again, though, both iPhones beat it.

In real-world use, the phone felt perfectly slick in most departments. The only slight problem we encountered was a slight pause in the appearance of the camera app and some of the more graphics-heavy apps.

The screen performs even better. It’s blazingly bright at its maximum setting: we measured it at 550cd/m2, which means it’s readable on even the brightest days. Even with Sony’s “X-Reality” and “Super-vivid” image enhancements turned off, contrast is a highly respectable 966:1, lending movies, games and photos plenty of solidity and depth. With good colour accuracy and the ability to cover 97.5% of the sRGB colour gamut, the Sony Z3 Compact’s display is as good as any we’ve come across on a phone.

We have no complaints over call quality. Most calls we made came through loud and clear at both ends. We had no issues with dropped calls, and the speaker reaches loud enough volumes that you can listen to talk radio and YouTube videos without having to connect to an external speaker.

The camera is also fantastic. Slightly over-aggressive compression does smear details in good light, and the autofocus isn’t the quickest – it hunts back and forth more than the cameras on the iPhone 6 or the Samsung Galaxy S5. However, for overall quality in low light (without the flash), it beats both, with a cleaner, more detailed image. Plus, it’s fun using the various modes, in particular the aforementioned slow-motion, and quality in video is top-notch.

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Perhaps more importantly, battery life is excellent. In our time with the phone, its 2,600mAh power pack reliably delivered more than 24 hours of mixed use. It also performed well in our tests, depleting at a rate of 7.5% per hour while playing 720p video (in flight mode with the screen set to a brightness of 120cd/m2), and at a rate of 3.3% per hour while streaming audio over a 3G connection with the screen switched off.

If we’re being picky, the Z3 Compact does fall slightly behind the very best here: its predecessor, the Z1 Compact, was more frugal – using 5.4% and 2.7% per hour in the video and streaming tests – as were the HTC One M8 (6.5% and 3.8%) and the iPhone 6 (7.5% and 1.7%). There isn’t a huge amount in it, though, and when battery life is really low, the Z3 Compact’s Stamina mode can help eke things out for a little longer.

Software

Finally, as with its other Android devices, Sony installs its own skin on top of Android 4.4.4 (KitKat), and there’s much to like. The most notable difference from plain Android is the way that the app drawer works: Sony adds the ability to reorder apps or have them displayed alphabetically, and uninstalling apps is different, too. It’s a positive addition rather than something that gets in the way.

We also like the extra, customisable shortcut menu that Sony adds to the bottom of the multitasking view. Largely, though, we appreciate that Sony’s customisations are unobtrusive and subtle. For the most part, the Z3 Compact behaves like a standard Android phone, and that’s a very good thing.

As far as Android 5 Lollipop goes, Sony promises the Z3 Compact will receive it’s update early in 2015, after the flagship Z3 gets its update.

Price and verdict

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The Xperia Z3 Compact can’t quite match the very best smartphones we’ve seen over the past year in terms of all-round performance, but then it doesn’t need to. Why? First, if you want flagship performance and features in a smaller package, it’s currently your only option other than the iPhone 6. Second, its £348 SIM-free price undercuts all of its larger-screened rivals by a huge margin.

We’ve been waiting almost a year for a smartphone to dethrone the Nexus 5 from the top of our A-List, and finally we have our man. The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact may be a little smaller, but it’s more manageable, superior to the Nexus 5 in all other departments, and is only £50 more expensive. In short, no other smartphone offers the same level of performance and features at this price, an achievement that sees it, at long last, elbow Google’s mainstay aside.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact vs the competition

At this price, size and specification, the Z3 Compact pretty much stands alone, however, there are others you might want to consider if you’re willing to forgo one or more of its strengths.

Motorola Moto X 2014

Price: £300 inc VAT

One of our recent favourites is the Motorola Moto X 2014, which is larger than the Z3 Compact, but still perfectly manageable for a large phone. It has a 5.2in AMOLED, but the bezels are narrow, so it’s possible to operate one-handed. It’s biggest strength, however, is its stunning design. The Moto X is water- and dust-resistant, just like the Sony, and it looks and feels fabulous, with a metal frame, sophisticated detailing and a pleasingly curved rear panel. It’s available, not only in the black, leather and bamboo of the standard models, but also a further range of customisable finishes via the the Moto Maker service.

It’s fast, too, and has a higher resolution AMOLED display than the Sony with superior contrast; in fact the only real weakness is the camera, and even that takes decent shots most of the time. Best of all, the price is now even more reasonable than when it first went on sale: at around £300 SIM free now, the Moto X 2014 is a very tempting alternative.

Read the full Motorola Moto X 2014 review

Apple iPhone 6

Price: From £539 inc VAT

Apple responded to increased competition from larger-screened Android phones at the back end of 2014 by producing two new, bigger handsets: the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.

Of the two, we prefer the 4.7in-screened iPhone 6. Just like the Sony Z3 Compact it’s just the right size, and although it isn’t as rugged or tough as the Z3 Compact and can’t beat its battery life, it is a much more sophisticated, attractive phone, and performance is even faster all-round.

The Touch ID sensor is real time-saver, allowing you to unlock the phone and pay for App Store purchases with the dab of a digit, and the camera is absolutely superb, only beaten for quality by the Samsung Galaxy S6 and LG G4.

When it comes to smaller smartphones, the Z3 leads the way in the value for money stakes, but if you don’t mind paying more (a lot more), the iPhone 6 is hard to ignore.

Read the full Apple iPhone 6 review

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact specifications
Cheapest price on contract	Free
Contract monthly charge	£18.00
Contract period	24 months
Contract provider	mobiles.co.uk
Physical
Dimensions	65 x 8.7 x 127mm (WDH)
Weight	129g
Touchscreen	yes
Primary keyboard	On-screen
Core Specifications
RAM capacity	2GB
Camera megapixel rating	20.7mp
Front-facing camera?	yes
Video capture?	yes
Display
Screen size	4.6in
Resolution	720 x 1280
Landscape mode?	yes
Other wireless standards
Bluetooth support	yes
Integrated GPS	yes
Software
OS family	Android