Sony Xperia Z3v Smartphone For Verizon Wireless Review

Sony utilized some of its Handycam and Cyber-shot technologies to equip the Xperia Z3v with a camera that the company is calling its “best smartphone camera yet.” Given Sony’s history in the camera business, we have high expectations for the 20.7 megapixel camera found within the Xperia Z3v.

In our tests, the Xperia Z3v captured sharp images in bright light. As is the case with other smartphone cameras, indoor shots and low-light conditions still posed a bit of challenge, however. Indoor shots showed occasional noise, but that’s pretty common in smartphone cameras. Overall, we’d say image quality is as good or better than most of the Android smartphones we’ve seen to date.

One area where the Xperia Z3v’s camera really stands out is in the preloaded shooting modes and effects. Upon opening the Camera Apps menu, you’ll be greeted with 16 different shooting options. A final option lets you add additional camera modes. Some of the preloaded options include Manual settings, Face in (lets you put your face in photos using both cameras), Multi camera (record the same scene from multiple angles), 4K video recording, Background defocus (adds background blur), Live on YouTube (broadcast directly to YouTube), Sweep Panorama, and much more. In addition to selecting various shooting modes Sony provides a basic camera adjustment menu for changing various settings such as the Smile Shutter, Geotagging, and more.

Battery Life

There is a fixed 3200 mAh battery inside the Xperia Z3v. Sony says this battery should last for up to 21 hours of talk time or up to 760 hours of standby time. Sony rates the music listening time of the phone at up to 120 hours and video playback time at up to 10 hours.

Sony includes a standard microUSB charger with the Xperia Z3v. If you want to take advantage of the phone’s Qi wireless charging capabilities, you’ll need to purchase a compatible charger separately.

In the phone’s Settings menu, Sony has included various Power Saving Modes including STAMINA mode and Ultra STAMINA mode to extend the phone’s battery life. Within the Battery menu, you can also see an estimated battery time remaining.

In real-world testing, the Xperia Z3v’s battery lasted for a few days on standby with little battery consumption. Even during heavy-use days of running benchmarks, checking email, browsing the web, making phone calls, and taking pictures, the Xperia Z3v's battery was able to make it through an entire day. Of course, battery life will vary depending on how the phone is used.

In an attempt to quantitatively measure the Xperia Z3v’s battery life in a controlled benchmark environment, we ran the latest version of the AnTuTu Battery Test. For this test, we set the Xperia Z3v’s display to 50% brightness. The Xperia Z3v scored 5769, which is gives it second place in our chart after the Galaxy Note 4.

We also ran our own HotHardware Web browsing test where we set up a webpage with a mix of graphics, media, and text. The page automatically refreshes every few minutes. This is a simple baseline test that measures up time while browsing the web. For this test, we set the Xperia Z3v’s display to 50% brightness and connected to the web via Wi-Fi. In this test, the Xperia Z3v lasted for nearly 8 hours.