Image Quality & Performance
With its Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and 2GB RAM the Sony Xperia Z1 is certainly no slouch in the performance department and in general use the Z1 is as responsive as you would expect when looking at the spec sheet. Even the most demanding applications that you can throw at a smartphone, such as 3D games, open quickly and run smoothly. We were also impressed by the Sony's battery life. Even after a long day with heavy use there would still be juice in the 3000mAh battery for another few hours. Most other phones we've tested before would hardly make it through the day with heavy use.
The Z1 is also very quick to get ready for taking pictures. It takes under 2 seconds to open the camera app from sleep mode by long-pressing the shutter button. You can already press the button while the device is still in your pocket which means by the time you hold it in front of you to frame a shot you're ready to press the shutter. Opening the camera app via its icon on the home screen takes about a second.
Shot-to-shot times are not lightning fast but at 0.5 sec in good light should be enough for most smartphone users. However, focus speed decreases very noticeably to more than 1.0 sec in lower light. Very occasionally the Z1 also captures a out-of-focus image despite a locked focus. Most of the affected images were taken in low light and with flash.
Daylight, Low ISO
The Sony Xperia Z1's exposure is usually spot on in most lighting situations. In common with most other camera phones colors are a little more saturated than in real life, but the auto white balance function does an efficient job under both natural and artificial light.
So while the Sony Xperia Z1's images look pleasant enough at screen size a few problems become apparent when you zoom in further. The lens is quite sharp in the central areas of the frame and in its 20.7MP mode the Sony can capture a lot of detail there but close up the image output has a very processed and over-sharpened look. You'll find stepping artifacts and a good dose of grain in areas of plain color.
Toward the edges of the frame our sample showed distinctive signs of softness which, in combination with the processing artifacts mentioned above, can make pixel-peeping on the Z1 more unpleasant the further you move away from the center of the frame.
In good light the Sony captures images with good exposure and color but under closer scrutiny the Z1 cannot translate its large sensor area into cleaner images.
Low Light, High ISO
With its fast F2.0 lens and ISO climbing as high as ISO 1000 in its 20.7MP mode the Sony Xperia allows you to capture images with good exposure, even in very low light. There is no optical image stabilization system on the Z1, so at some point the slow shutter speeds create an increased risk of camera shake but on the other hand the physical shutter button helps keep things steadier than when tapping a virtual button on the screen.
At a 100% view we see the same imperfections as in the bright light samples above. There is a lot of noise and artifacts in the Sony images and it increases as the sensor sensitivity goes up. That said, most noise is of the grainy kind which we are much more willing to tolerate (presumably because we're used to it from the good old film days) than the "digital" chromatic noise. As you would expect the noise is accompanied by decreasing levels of fine detail as it is being smeared by noise reduction.
Despite the noise and noise reduction edge definition, saturation and exposure remain good throughout the ISO range. So while the Sony's high ISO output struggles to withstand close scrutiny it's more than suitable for online sharing and screen size viewing.
Flash
With their tiny LEDs flash performance tends to be one of the weak points of all smartphone cameras. The Sony Xperia Z1 is no exception which means it has to crank up the ISO quite a bit when taking flash images. As a result of this close up the images reveal a lot of noise and loss of detail, just like the high-ISO samples above.
Exposure and white balance tend to be good though. On the Z1 you have a little more control over the flash function than on most smartphones. Apart from the usual flash auto/on/off settings there are separate settings for the anti-red-eye mode, fill-flash and for use of the LED as a torch. Nevertheless those users who are planning to take many flash pictures are much better off with a device that offers a Xenon flash, such as the Nokia Lumia 1020.
8MP images
Its 20.7MP maximum resolution is one of the Sony Xperia Z1's marketing headlines but looking at the images output, it might be more sensible to set the camera to 8MP which is the resolution in the default Superior Auto mode anyway.
Even in the best of conditions you only sacrifice a minimum amount of detail and noise, and artifacts are much less prominent when viewing images at a 100% magnification. As a bonus the smaller files need less storage and you can use scene modes, HDR and ISO 1600 and 3200, all of which are not available at 20.7MP.
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