Sony's New Xperia Z Goes for a Quick Swim and Survives

News
By Jane McEntegart
published

Check out Sony's new star.

Sony's Xperia Z is a beautiful piece of kit. With its glass front and back, a 5-inch screen with a 1920 x 1080 resolution, a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, as well as 2 GB of RAM and Jelly Bean, this phone can go toe-to-toe with the best of them. However, one of our favorite parts about this smartphone is the fact that it's water resistant. Sony was more than happy to let us test that feature out at Pepcom's Digital Experience on Monday night, too. The company had a fish bowl on hand and let us dunk the phones to our hearts' content.

Once removed from the water (having spent a couple of minutes marinading in there), the phone worked perfectly. Sony has ensured that no water get in via the ports by plugging them up with port covers. Love them or hate them, without them, the Xperia Z would surely drown. We inquired as to how sturdy the port covers really were, wondering if users might accidentally pull the finicky tabs off accidentally. Sony seemed confident it wouldn't be an issue.

As far as software is concerned, the unit we played with seemed to have no issues switching from one app to the next or swiping through photos, and using NFC to share media to other devices (including speakers and TVs) is relatively simple.

Check out our hands on photos below! The Sony Xperia Z packs a 5-inch screen with a 1920 x 1080 resolution, a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 2 GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel camera, a microSD card slot, and an HDMI port. The whole thing runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.1.1 and is due out this quarter. Feast your eyes on the images below. You can find more photos of the Sony Xperia Z smartphone on Sony's official site.

 

 

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Jane McEntegart
7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • internetlad
    did they use a system similar to what Liquapel where there's a nano-thin coating on the electronics, or did they just plug up all the holes?
    Reply
  • joytech22
    internetladdid they use a system similar to what Liquapel where there's a nano-thin coating on the electronics, or did they just plug up all the holes?
    They just plugged up the holes. If water got into the inside, it would surely die.
    Still, a pretty nifty device since I've recently (due to hot Australian weather) taken a liking to water parks.
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    There are many waterproof cameras on the market that have a warranty that sounds like this: "If this waterproof camera comes in contact with water, your warranty is void."

    And a lot of people got screwed over when they attempted to RMA their bricked waterproof cameras.

    I wonder what the Xperia Z's warranty say...
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    would be nice if they can come up a waterproof earbuds + allow earbuds to stay plugged while ur phone is underwater.
    Reply
  • Regarding the waterproof earbuds, Sony have actually announced just that. But these of course come with the waterproof walkman (w-270 series). So maybe they will come out with those seperately for their phones in the near future.
    Reply
  • I think is Android 4.1.2
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    Tomfreakwould be nice if they can come up a waterproof earbuds + allow earbuds to stay plugged while ur phone is underwater.
    Water-proof (or more accurately, water-resistant) ear buds shouldn't be difficult to make IMO and the same is true for keeping them plugged in underwater (although I doubt that they'd work well underwater unless your ears are covered by air-tight containers with the ear buds inside them).

    All that you'd need to do for the ear buds is protect the little speakers with something water tight such as a little rubber and they should be fine, even if a bit muffled in sound quality. The connector should be easy to water proof without any issues.
    Reply