Earlier this month, Sony announced the Xperia Z5 series of smartphones. I probably would have posted this earlier but I somehow missed the news, most likely because I was focusing on rumors about other stuff. Yes, the Z5 Premium is the first 2160p smartphone. Its 801 PPI display is 2.5 times greater than the 326 PPI of the original "Retina" iPhone 4. I find the differences in resolution among the three Z5 devices slightly amusing, as the Z5 Compact has only 11% of the pixels of the Z5 Premium in a display that is 70% of the area. The odd thing about the Z5 Premium is that most apps actually run at 1080p, including the user interface. Only pictures and videos will be shown in the full resolution. The 23 MP camera can take 4K video, so you can watch the video you take with the phone at full resolution on the phone. And that's how all three phones get a claimed 2 day battery life, although that claim is broad enough that there could still be significant differences in battery life among the devices. The Adreno 430 GPU in the Snapdragon 810 performs quite well, the Z5 series place in the top tier of smartphones in the GFXBench Manhattan benchmark both in onscreen (performed at the device resolution which is 1080p for the Z5 Premium for the above reason) and offscreen (performed at 1080p for all devices). I would imagine that performance at 2160p would be considerably lower. We've been seeing some 2160p gaming laptops recently, where one possible use case is to run games at 1080p and everything else at 2160p. Of course, games have had the ability to run at a resolution lower than the display resolution for a long time. But the Xperia Z5 Premium gets to a whole new level by showing almost everything at the lower resolution. The Z5 Premium is slightly thicker and heavier than the Z5 (some of the weight can be explained by the larger display), so its high resolution display doesn't seem to be such a huge drawback only if I give Sony the benefit of the doubt regarding battery life. That being said, I'm not sure if the 2160p display is worth those tradeoffs for many people in the target market for this type of phone, especially given that you literally won’t see its advantages much of the time. Smartphone-based virtual reality headsets like Google Cardboard can benefit from as much resolution as you can provide. The VR headsets are designed to fill much of what you see with display which results in pixels appearing a whole lot larger. Still, that seems to be a niche use case at the moment. Sources: AnandTech, Phone Arena, Sony.
People into filming would be interested, but only for the 4k video camera built into the phone. To me, that's the cool part - if it was a 4k screen without the camera then that wouldn't really be worth it. Edit: I believe other phones do have 4k cameras, but not the screen to back it up? So what I mean is that it's cool to view it in full resolution.
I'm old and have nothing nice to say about this, because I am still of the mindset that phones are meant to call people and nothing else.
There were a few complaints about how the Apple TV doesn't support 4K when the iPhone 6S does. You could take 4K video on your iPhone but not be able to view it natively on the iPhone or the Apple TV.
Unless Microsoft/Nokia pull a new Lumia 1020 out of their ass in he next 6 months, I'm probably going to Sony. I'm going to agree with Fooshi and say I don't really care about a 4k or even 1080p screen. I'm more interested in the camera. Given my current phone got water damaged when I went snowboarding in April, I quite like Sony's waterproofing. Add SD card compatibility and it's a pretty convincing package for me. And again, need to agree with Fooshi on the size-front. I hate how large phones are atm including my 1020. The Sony compact or older iPhones with 4" screens were far better imo. Outside of the "West", dual-sim phones are quite popular. They usually come out later or are slightly lower spec. I really want a dual-sim phone but I don't want to end up with a crappier phone as a result, so I guess I'll just have to look a bit harder. Or MS/Nokia can just do a new 1020 and make my decision far easier.
This is my phone: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004MLKWXI/ It has an enormous 1.43 inch screen and a resolution of 128 x 128. And I prefer it to a smartphone.
i wouldnt want to miss my smartphone. still have my sgs3, 3rd year now, and i see absolutely no reason why id need anything more than that.
My One M7 already feels like some fucking stupid brick, I'll get >5" next with a proper camera. On the other hand I'm also interested in an updated 1020.
My guess is that Microsoft is letting Windows phone die, I mean when was the last time they released a new flagship device?
By all accounts they have a few high-end phones due out for the end of the year once Windows Phone 10 is live. Keep in mind that if Windows Phone 10's Android app compatibility is as good as people are saying, then that could really be a game-changer.
