Sony Xperia XZs First Impressions

Sony first unveiled its Xperia XZs smartphone back in February this year, and it has now been launched in India priced at Rs. 49,990. Notably, the company has introduced a dual-SIM version of this smartphone for India. It will be available in Black, Ice Blue, and Warm Silver from April 11, with preorders starting from April 4. The phone will be sold exclusively on Flipkart online as well as through offline stores.

We got our hands on the Xperia XZs at its India launch event, and here are our first impressions.

Talking first about the design of this smartphone, the Xperia XZs doesn't offer anything new when it comes to aesthetics. It features the same "loop surface" design that has featured on several Xperia smartphones so far. The front and back are flat while the sides are rounded. The device is easy to hold and feels sturdy, but doesn't bring anything new to the table. The power button volume rocker, and physical camera button are all located on the right. While the power button is conveniently accessible, the volume rocker as well as the camera button can be difficult to reach when using the phone in portrait mode.

This phone is noticeably thicker than most modern flagship smartphones. Build quality is good but the design doesn't feel fresh and exciting. As these are our first impressions, we would like to hold our final opinion till the full review.

Moving to the highlight feature of the smartphone, the Xperia XZs has a 19-megapixel Motion Eye camera with super slow-motion video recording. The rear camera has with a 1/2.3-inch memory-stacked Exmor RS sensor and predictive hybrid autofocus, all of which allows it to capture 960fps super slow-motion videos. Sony claims that the Xperia XZs offers improved camera performance compared to the Xperia XZ, with 19 percent larger pixels.

There is also a 13-megapixel front camera with an f/2.0 aperture, and SteadyShot 5-axis stabilisation. In our limited time with the Xperia XZs, we found its camera performance to be above average. Even though it can take a few tries to get 960fps super slow-motion videos to look good, the feature did come across as impressive.

Coming to the screen, the Xperia XZs sports a 5.2-inch full-HD Triluminos Display powered by Sony's X-Reality mobile picture engine. In our initial impressions, we found the display quality to be quite good.

The Xperia XZs runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat and is powered by a Snapdragon 820 processor coupled with 4GB of RAM. We didn't face any lag or performance issues while using the apps which are preloaded on the device. However, we will reserve judgment till we conduct our full review.

In the audio department, the phone is capable of playing Hi-Res file formats. LPCM, FLAC, ALAC, and DSD files are supported. The phone has front-facing speakers and a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top. We found the speakers' volume to be a bit low, but the quality of the sound was good.

The Xperia XZs has a 2900mAh battery and 64GB of built-in storage, which is expandable using a microSD card of up to 256GB. In this price range, the phone will be competing against Android heavyweights including the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and Google's Pixel. We will have to wait and see if this new Sony smartphone is has what it takes to impact current and future Android flagships in the Indian market.

For our detailed review of the Sony Xperia XZs and other tech related news, stay tuned to Gadgets 360.