Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact 4.6 Inch HD Screen, Android 8.0 Oreo, UK SIM-Free Smartphone with 4Gb RAM and 32 GB Storage (Single SIM) - Black

This is likely to be the last of Sony's true compact smartphone offerings at 4.6 inch - the new xz4 'compact' is understood to be around 5.5 inches, which has been the standard size of many smartphones over time. The one great benefit of a proper compact model is that it will fit neatly into to a shirt breast pocket and indeed into a modest ladies handbag. The current super giant smartphones are almost as big as some of the tablets around, so what's the point?In use, the xz1 has an excellent battery life, is quick and responsive and has an excellent rear camera, albeit slightly lower resolution than the z5 it replaced. There is in reality little difference in the perceived output and this is also offset by the additional features both for stills and movies.Also in use, the SD micro memory card capacity is excellent - my phone takes a 200gb card!The OS has recently updated to Android 9 and this is an improvement on 7 & 8 - 7 being particularly power hungry.All in all a great little phone and since I was able to get it on a Black Friday deal, excellent value for money.

Sony are usually my 'go to' manufacturer for electronics and I was in the market for a new phone to replace my broken (rear cover made of glass) Z3 Compact so I looked at the reviews and settled on the Sony XZ1 Compact mainly for the similar size and features.The XZ1 arrived and looks pretty good and feels sturdy, I inserted the SIM card (which was particularily fiddly) and Micro SD card and set it up after charging the battery fully. Once connected to my WiFi it did a whole load of updates of the OS and Apps, took just over an hour in total and I was suprised to see the battery reduced to 77% remaining after these. I hadn't put the Stamina mode on so no big deal I thought and left it at that.The quality of voice calls isn't a patch on the Z3 Compact in my opinion, and they get dropped for no apparent reason. I put the same Sim card back in my old Sony and hey presto - no problem at all. I tried changing the XZ1 setings but nothing seemed to make any difference and Sony Support weren't much help to be honest. The signal strength on this phone is a lot lower on my other Sony in exactly the same place and that could explain the dropped calls I guess but there was nothing I could do to get this any better. I started to miss calls and text messages when walking out and about and that's not good for a phone of this price.On top of the call issue the keyboard is fiddly at best, and became unresponsive on some occasions. The camera takes ok pictures in good daylight but anything other than decent light then the pictures become very grainy/noisy.Sony add a whole raft of bloatware to the Operating System and I found it hard if not impossible to remove most of it, and every time it connected to my Wifi the unistalled apps either reinstalled themselves or something else appered that I didn't ask for!I don't know what's going on at Sony recently but they seem to have dropped the ball somewhat, this phone is a total disappointment compared to my old Z3 Compact. They've even removed the FM radio for some unknown reason so you have to install a 3rd party app instead and use either a Wifi or use up your data allowance, why? If there is ever a power cut or any emergency Radio becomes important as most stations have backup power and can continue to broadcast. Plus its free to listen to!At the end of the day, the battery wasn't anyway near as good as its claimed to be, the signal strength for calls was poor at best, the camera was mediochre and the missing FM radio left me wondering why I'd bought this particular model, so sadly its going back and I'm on the lookout for something better in the future.Come on Sony, please up your game as there are plenty of other manufacturers out there actually listening to what consumers want and making reliable products.

I have to point out that it's getting difficult to get a genuinely new XZ1 compact -- the first one I bought was in very good condition, but it wasn't actually new from the factory. So be careful whom you buy from. Although it's irritating, this situation doesn't detract from the phone itself, which is excellent.There aren't many high-performance, compact Android phones on the market -- it seems to be a market segment that only Sony caters for, and some of its offerings have not been all that impressive. The Z3 Compact was a great phone, but its successors lost some of the innovative features -- like the surface-mount charging connector -- that made it what it was. The XZ1 is worth consideration if you've been waiting for a genuine successor to the Z3C -- it still doesn't have the surface-mount charging connector, sadly, but it does have a fingerprint sensor. In other respects, the XZ1C is like a Z3C on steroids.The XZ1C has a more conventional construction than the ZxC series; rather than a glass back, the new model has the commonplace grippy plastic. Although the glass back was stylish and unusual, its slipperiness was a real hazard; I lost count of the number of times my Z3C ended up face-down on the floor. The XZ1C is comfortable and secure to hold, and easy to operate with one hand, which is one of the main selling points of a compact phone. The XZ1C looks exactly like a scaled-down version of the full-sized phones in the X series, with few concessions to trendy roundness -- the body is essentially a rectangular box with a screen in the middle, and only a slight chamfering of the edges. Unlike the full-size X-phones, this one fits comfortably in my shirt pocket, and I can go running with it in my pocket, without my trousers falling down.The 720-pixel screen resolution is considered unimpressive by modern standards, but it's OK for most purposes on a screen this size. I have to admit that, side by side with the XZ, which has a 1080-pixel screen, the smaller phone's screen does lack a certain something. You can't (well, I can't) see individual pixels in it, but there's a certain lack of clarity. Without the side-by-side comparison, I doubt it would be noticed.The XZ1C comes (don't they all?) with a certain amount of pointless bloat. Apps like Facebook and Kobo are preinstalled, and can't be removed, although they can be disabled. Nearly all the bloat can be disabled, in fact; but, of course, it continues to use storage. I really don't understand why vendors do this -- if I wanted to install Facebook, it would take only five minutes to do so. Some of the Sony apps can neither be removed nor disabled; but at least with Android 8.0 you can prevent these apps popping up irritating notifications. Happily, SD cards are cheap these days, and the XZ1 claims to accommodate up to 256Gb.The XZ1C comes with a proper, 3.5mm headphone jack. The newer XZ2C does not, so I won't be buying one of those. Audio quality through decent wired headphones is pretty good but, frankly, it is on most phones these days. The Bluetooth implementation has LDAC support, which should (if you believe Sony) provide better wireless sound quality, with compatible headphones. The sound quality with Sony wireless headphones is pretty amazing, by Bluetooth standards, but whether it's better than with the competing aptX format, I really couldn't say.I don't know how the XZ1C behaves with applications that are truly demanding, but most routine stuff like web surfing and media playback is effortless. I get a couple of days battery life if I'm careful but, of course, battery performance depends enormously on how a phone is used. It's at least as good -- with my usage -- as any other smartphone I've tried.All in all, the XZ1C is a great compact smartphone. It's better in many respects than its so-called successor, the XZ2C -- particularly its price. If you can still get a new XZ1C it will be less than half the price of the new model.

Full marks for item arriving early. However, no marks for week long delay causing unnecessary stress in issuing a refund as item was returned immediately unopened as the size was too small for elderly customer with eyesight problems.Grateful thanks to Amazon customer service for facilitating in the issue of the refund.