The Sony Xperia Z5 isn’t just any phone. Oh no: this is James Bond’s phone, you know. Hand-crafted for him specially by Q… ok, a multi-million dollar product-placement deal in new movie Spectre. But the question remains: does that make it a good phone for you, a mere non-secret agent?
Well, Sony’s £530 answer to the iPhone 6S and the Samsung Galaxy S6 is the company’s best handset to date. A promising step up on last year’s Xperia Z3(don’t ask what happened to the Z4, yeah?), the Xperia Z5 is accomplished on most fronts and offers the best smartphone camera we’ve ever seen.
Be warned though: despite being Bond’s handset of choice, this device won’t make you good at driving like a boss, fighting hoards of henchmen or wooing ladies. Maybe they’re saving that for the Z6.
That’s not to say there aren’t some design improvements that have been bestowed on the Z5, however. The frosted-glass rear of the device, for example, offers a nice point of differentiation in a metal and plastic-obsessed market – an unusual finish that oozes class without being too much of a fingerprint magnet. It’s water and dust resistant too, but we wouldn’t advise testing its ability to withstand a drop.
The Z5 isn’t an ugly phone. It’s not quite the sleek, suave bit of kit you’d expect to see in the hand of the world’s coolest spy, but it’s not too shabby. It does look pretty familiar though, echoing the look of both the Z3 and Sony’s flagship phones of the past three years. This is a company that’s all about evolution over revolution.
