Sony has been having some trouble getting profits from its mobile division, so it was kind of disappointing to see them recycle the design of their second flagship device of last year into a device that ended up being called Xperia Z4 in Japan or Xperia Z3+ everywhere else. The new device carries the same screen and the same camera on the back, and the minimal differences that come in terms of hardware are that it is thinner and lighter and even shinier, the USB charging port is no longer covered by a flap while keeping the IP68 certification to make it waterproof and dustproof, the front-facing speakers are better integrated into the hardware by moving them into the edges and the camera in the front was upgraded to a 5-megapixel one with a wider angle. Its internals remains almost the same, but the new device uses the newer Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor.
When Qualcomm announced this processor, it seemed to be a solid upgrade. First of all, it is based on the newer 64-bit architecture which has been supported by Android since Lollipop and while this isn’t a game-changing benefit, it makes the device lasts a little longer as more apps will start being coded to use the 64-bit features. This new processor also brought a better gaming experience and better power management, 4K content streaming as well as better sound and support for the fastest 4G LTE networks.
All of this improvements sound great, but it was recently reported that the Sony devices that use this processor suffer from overheating, a problem that has been associated with the chipset, although an update is being made to fix this. Benchmark tests for the Xperia Z3+ didn’t show a significant difference against competition, perhaps it has been programmed this way in order to prevent the temperature rising too high. We all know that these tests don’t really show how a device will perform in daily activities and to prove just that, there’s a video from a Vietnamese user that shows how opening some apps and games can be a little faster on the Xperia Z3 although the benchmark shows better results for the Xperia Z3+, both of this handsets running the same version of the operating system.