CREDIT: SONY
Sony's new Xperia Z5 Premium reps a 4K display which separates itself from all other competitors.

A game changing phone, or just plain overkill

With an ultra-thin design, groundbreaking photo quality, buttery smooth processors, waterproof and 1080P HD display, Sony’s Xperia Z5 stands out amongst its competitors.

For many years now, Sony has been quite vocal about capping their screens at full high definition, while companies like Samsung, LG and Google have gone 1440 x 2560 QHD display.

This new screen resolution sports twice the amount of pixels, giving the device a refreshingly vibrant screen experience. Sony’s reason for not following its competitors was to focus on the interior rather than the exterior.

In the week of Sept. 7, Sony contradicted their stance on screen display. Instead of rivaling the other mobile tech giants, Sony decided to give their new set a 3840 x 2160 4K-display makeover.

A 4K display is relatively new in our electronic society, with 4K TVs starting to just take off to the mainstream. Prices have almost reduced by 50 per cent in the last two years and content is slowly making its way onto services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.

However, 4K TVs are different because we have the power and technology to run them smoothly. We are not quite there with phones, which worries consumers. A phone with a QHD display takes twice as much power to run then a standard high definition display.

So what happens when you give your phone four times the work of normal HD display phone with a processor that is only supposed to work twice as hard?

Some early reviewers have already complained of overheating issues, poor battery life and a lag. With the side effects, the only thing a 4K screen is providing is higher resolution.

This doesn’t mean the display will have better colour accuracy or contrast ratio, which is far more important as the human eye can only see a small amount of the clarity in the resolution.

The critiques on this device really are split into opposing sides of the debate: those that say Sony is putting a useless spec on their phone for promotional purposes to show the world they can still be innovative and those that say Sony is looking at the bigger picture.

Virtual reality integrated smartphones are slowly being released into the mainstream and this phone will be superior to any other because the one time that resolution matters is when your eyes are two inches from the device.

Also, while most new flagship phones can shoot in 4K, none can actually be viewed in full resolution. This gives the Xperia Z5 a ‘one-up’ against its competitors as it actually puts the resolution feature to use.

As the phone was just announced, critics will have plenty of time to play with this smartphone answering the question, is it truly worth the purchase?