Sony Xperia Z Ultra best review

Sony has announced the Xperia Z Ultra phablet with Full HD Triluminos display. Sony has officially taken the wraps off its hotly-anticipated and much-rumoured Xperia Z Ultra, a 6.44-inch stylus-equipped phablet with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, waterproof chassis and Triluminos Full HD 1080p display.

It seems as though pretty much all the rumours are true, Sony revealed you can indeed sketch and write on the Xperia Z Ultra’s display with any stylus (capacitive or otherwise) or anything else vaguely pointy, such as a pencil. It also packs Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor clocked at a beefy 2.2GHz with 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU.

Naturally the device supports 4G LTE connectivity as well as GPS, Bluetooth, DLNA, microUSB, NFC and Wi-Fi. The phone might be massive but Sony has made it as sleek as possible with a 6.5mm thick profile and a weight of only 212g. Design-wise the handset looks a lot like the Xperia Z, except bigger, of course, with the same glass front and back, contoured corners and panelled detailing on the edges.

If you’re in the market for an Xperia Z Ultra available colours will include black, white and purple. Like the Xperia Z it’s also IP55/58 certified, meaning not only is it water and dust resistant but actually waterproof up to a depth of one metre and Sony says you can even film Full HD video underwater. The camera itself is an 8-megapixel Exmor RS sensor with burst mode, autofocus, HDR, face detection, Full HD 1080p video capture, digital stabilisation, object tracking, white balance and panoramic capture. There’s also a 2-megapixel 1080p front-facing secondary. Onboard storage is 16GB with microSD expansion for cards up to 64GB.

The battery pack is a 3,000mAh unit and the phone uses Sony’s STAMINA mode to improve battery life. The handset runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with Sony’s customised UI software layered on top. The display is a standout feature of the handset, as it uses Triluminos technology to deliver more natural colour in combination with the X-Reality Engine (an evolution of Sony’s Mobile Bravia Engine 2).

The Full HD resolution clocks in at 1920×1080 pixels and it has a pixel density of 342 pixels-per-inch (ppi). We hope to have a hands-on and video footage of the Xperia Z Ultra fairly shortly ahead of a full review. Stay tuned for more.