Users of the Sony Xperia Z1 and Z1 Compact have a lot going for them. First they’ve got an excellent water-resistant Sony phone with a fantastic build quality. They’ve also got a camera that is better than the vast majority of smartphone cameras out there. With 20.7 megapixels of raw shooting power, the camera on the Z1 and Z1 Compact is nothing short of fantastic, and that Snapdragon 800 processor under the hood makes taking super high resolution photos and videos a snap without any lag or delay between taking shots. What was odd, however, was Sony’s complete lack of 4K video and slow motion recording modes, both of which can be found on the Xperia Z2 which sports almost the exact same internal hardware and camera. Obviously this irked quite a few Xperia Z1 and Z1 Compact owners, but fear not, the fantastic Android development community is here to help you! We’ve seen these sorts of mods recently with owners of the LG G2 getting the G Pro 2’s camera via a mod, and now it’s time for Xperia Z1 and Z1 Compact owners to do the same.
Thanks to the talented developers lagalaga and Riyal of XDA Developers fame, any Xperia Z1 or Z1 Compact owner who has a rooted device can now drop a ported version of the Xperia Z2’s camera on their Xperia Z1. This is the same camera including all the new modes like Timeshift slow-mo and 4K video recording among a few other goodies. Right now it looks like even 720p 120fps video work perfectly on both Z1 devices. 4K video recording works like a charm, but SteadyShot is unable to be used while recording in 4K for the time being. It’s not known whether or not this feature will be able to be ported to the Z1 or Z1 Compact, but most phones on the market that can record 4K video can’t use any kind of digital image stabilization either, so it’s no real surprise if that’s not working or can’t be used in general. Head on over to the XDA Developers forum here or at the source link below and get to flashing those zips. Remember you have to be rooted in order to use this, and always take caution when flashing files that modify your device. Have fun and let us know how the mod works out for you!