Sony Xperia Z1 vs LG G2

Sony announced their latest flagship device – Sony Xperia Z1 at IFA 2013. Sony Xperia Z1 had leaked numerous times prior to launch and when Sony announced it, nothing came as a surprise – even the 20.7MP camera. Sony Xperia Z1 has one of the biggest camera sensor on an Android smartphone, even bigger than the one on the camera-phone – Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom, but without the optical zoom.

LG had announced their flagship nearly a month before the IFA during the first week of August. LG G2 is the company’s top of the shelf product powered by the best of Snapdragon – Snapdragon 800 . It comes with an unbelievable build that is almost bezel free and has a new design language with the power lock key and the volume rocker at the back of the device.

Today, we will be seeing how Sony’s camera centric powerful Xperia Z1 will take on the all-round LG G2. Both the phones pack some serious processing power and do they have what it takes to dwarf out each other. Lets find out. You can check out the in-depth comparison video right below.

Design and Build Quality

In terms of looks, Sony Xperia Z1 and LG G2 are quite different. Sony Xperia Z1 follows a slightly played out industrial design language with a rectangular build and a single piece of aluminum at the center and glass for the center and back – this is the same design language that Sony has been using for its flagships in 2013. LG, on the other hand, have gone all plastic, but that is not something bad. LG managed to squeeze a bigger 5.2 display in a much smaller body frame than the Xperia Z1.

In terms of dimensions, the Sony Xperia Z1 is taller and wider than LG G2, but only slightly thinner. Xperia Z1 weighs comparatively heavy 170g while the G2 weighs just around 143g.

On the front of the phones, as always display dominates most of the real estate. The bezels are not too thin to be spoke about and they are just regular on the Xperia Z1, in fact they are comparatively much thicker. LG G2′s inspiring design starts right from the front where there seems to be nothing but the display. The bezels look absolutely thin and that has led the design team fit a big 5.2inch display in a body much smaller than the Xperia Z1.

On the Sony Xperia Z1, above the display, the earpiece is along the top edge and on the right side of the Sony logo, we have the 2MP front camera. On the left side of the logo, we have the proximity and ambient sensors. On LG G2, we have the front camera and the sensor arrangement on the left side of the earpiece. Below the display, there are no navigation buttons on either of the phones and hence all navigation is restricted to on-screen buttons.

The positioning of keys is drastically different on both the phones. On the right side of Xperia Z1 you have the circular and symbolic Sony power lock button, volume rocker, microSIM card slot and an extra camera shutter key since it is a camera centric device while the right side is completely barren on LG G2.

On the bottom of Xperia Z1, there is just a single long loudspeaker grill. On LG G2, we have a microUSB slot at the center with speaker grills on either side and a 3.5mm audio jack.

On the left side we have provision for docking at the center on Xperia Z1 and a covered microUSB charging port along with microSD card slot. Just like its right side, the left of LG G2 is completely barren.

On the top, Xperia Z1 has just a 3.5mm audio jack while on LG G2, we see a secondary microphone and an IR blaster. All the ports except the 3.5mm audio jack are covered with flaps in Xperia Z1 to make it dust and water resistant.

The back of these devices continue to be different. The materials used for the back are quite different and hence the characteristics are different as well.The back of Xperia Z1 follows the same design language as the Xperia Z and Xperia Z Ultra and uses glass. The choice of glass is interesting, but it is quite glossy and attracts fingerprints. LG G2 has a glossy textured plastic back and that can get really smudgy with fingerprints. The main feature of LG G2′s design is the positioning of the power lock key and the volume rocker below the 13MP on the back. Xperia Z1 has a 20.7MP Sony G lens on the top left corner with a LED flash below it.

Overall, it would be a tough choice to choose between Sony Xperia Z1 which has a 5inch display and while the industrial design continues to be solid and eye-catchy, it is quite reflective, glossy and a fingerprint magnet and LG G2, which uses a glossy plastic as well, but the new design and the screen to body ratio makes it quite the phone to look out for.

Display

Display is one of the most important pieces in a phone and both these phones come with Full HD displays. Sony Xperia Z1 has a 5inch Full HD Triluminous display with a pixel density of 441ppi while the LG G2 has a 5.2inch Full HD True IPS+ display with a pixel density of 424ppi.

In various aspects of a display like brightness, contrast, viewing angles and sunlight legibility, LG G2 is way ahead of the Sony Xperia Z1. The viewing angles of Xperia Z1 are very poor and remind us of the screen of Xperia Z which suffered from similar problems. When seen from a slightly different angle, the screen of Xperia Z1 appears whitish. The higher pixel density on the Xperia Z1 does not give any advantage that is visible to the naked eye.

Overall, the bigger display of LG G2 is much better.

Hardware and Performance

Both the phones here have the best processor available in the market – Snapdragon 800 SoC. The specifications of both these phones are identical and they house a Quad-Core Snapdragon 800 SoC, Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB RAM. Xperia Z1 is clocked at 2.2GHz while LG G2 is clocked at a slightly higher 2.26GHz.

Both the phones come with 2GB RAM and out of the 2GB RAM, Xperia Z1 has 1.7GB usable RAM and when the device is idle, around 1GB is free while the LG G2 Ultra has 1.8GB is usable and when the device is idle, around 1GB is free.

In terms of internal storage, there is 16GB internal storage on Xperia Z1 and LG G2 comes in 16/32GB variants. Xperia Z1 has support for microSD cards which is missing in LG G2. Out of the 16GB, around 11.7GB is user-accessible on Xperia Z1, while in LG G2, only 10.6GB is accessible.

Since both the phones have the same processor, same amount of RAM, there is very difference in the benchmarks. In terms of day to day performance, both the phones are blazing fast. Opening apps, switching between them is so fast on both the phones that you would hardly notice any difference.

Overall, in terms of hardware and benchmarks, it is close tie.

Camera

Sony Xperia Z1 is the company’s first step towards a camera centric flagship as it comes with the biggest sensor on an Android smartphone. The Xperia Z1 comes with a 20.7MP Sony G Lens sensor and houses Sony’s own Bionz Image processor for superior image quality. LG G2 comes with a little modest 13MP camera, but features OIS(Optical Image Stabilization). Though both the phones have Snapdragon 800 under the hood, 4K recording is absent. In Sony Xperia Z1 you do not even get 1080p Full HD recording at 60fps which you find on LG G2. Both the phones have a 2MP front camera that can record 1080p videos as well.

In terms of camera UI, there is a huge difference. On the Xperia Z1, the camera UI is different as the mode selection button is present on the bottom right corner above which we have the camera shutter key and video record button. The shortcut to recent images is on the top right corner. On the left side, we have the toggles for Flash and switch for Front/Back camera. Below it is the three vertical dot icon for settings. The various shooting modes that are available in Xperia Z1 include the regular Superior Auto mode, Manual mode, Timeshift Burst mode, Picture effect mode, sweep panorama, AR Effect, Social Live and Info-eye. Also Xperia Z1 produces over-sampled 8MP images in Superior Auto mode. This is one of the first Android smartphones to produce over-sampled images (which was introduced to smartphones by Nokia). LG G2 comes with a more busy camera UI that shows a lot of things and LG G2 has a lot of modes like Shot&Clear, HDR, Burst Shot, Beauty Shot, Dual Camera mode, Time Catch shot, Sport mode and night mode.

In terms of image quality, the photos and videos taken on the Xperia Z1 in daylight are better with nice details and more colors.

You can check out the camera comparison right below.

Software Features

Both the phones run on Android 4.2.2 and Xperia Z1 has Sony’s own UI with their version of apps like Album, Movies and Walkman while LG G2 is overlaid by LG’s own UI.

The app drawer on both the phones is different and both of them allow you arrange the icons in any order, alphabetical order. On G2, you can arrange the apps based on when you have actually download the app. Xperia Z1 has exactly ten and fixed toggles for various connectivity options like Bluetooth, WiFi, NFC and so on in the notification bar while G2 has a scrolling list of configurable toggles. Xperia Z1 comes with Sony’s small apps which can be accessed by pressing the third navigation key that also opens the list of already open apps. There are various small apps like calculator, recorder, timer, bookmarks and so on. You can open any number of these apps at a time and have them on screen. They are always present on the screen unless you close them. Instead of closing them, you can drag them to the right side of the screen where they become small icon and attach themselves to the right side of the screen. On clicking those minimized icons, they are visible again. These small apps can be very useful for taking down notes and doing small things in a fast manner. LG G2 comes with similar mini apps called as Q-Slide apps, but only two can be opened at a time. G2 also has Q-Memo app that lets you write on the screen and take notes.

Both the phones have their share of software bloatware(I mean features), but in terms of features it is a tie.

Multimedia

Sony Xperia Z1 comes with their home-brewed multimedia apps like Album, Walkman and Movies. The Album app which is the image gallery is quite functional as it supports pinch to zoom feature. When you pinch out inside the app, all the images rearrange themselves to the smallest possible thumbnail size and when you pinch in, they zoom in and keep zooming in until you are with a single image and even when pinch in further, they zoom the picture. The rearranging takes place so fast thanks to the Snapdragon 800. Walkman is Sony’s trademark music player and comes with all the features and some good Eye-candy. Movies is the video player for Sony smartphones and not it does it play the movie, but also fetches information about the movie from the Internet which gives you a quick summary of the movie.

LG G2′s gallery app is quite similar and allows pinch to zoom which rearranges photos based on the thumbnail size. The video playback of LG G2 is better than the one on Xperia Z1 as it supports wider range of video formats. Music player is good, but the one on Xperia Z1 looks and feels better.

Both the devices are great for multimedia, but because of the slightly bigger and better display, LG G2 has the advantage.

Gaming

Both the phones are absolutely great for gaming because of their specifications. But since the display on the Xperia Z1 is slightly small and sub-standard when compared to LG G2, LG G2 seems to be a better device for gaming. We noticed that both the devices heated up while playing graphics intense games.

Battery and Connectivity

The battery on both the phones is quite good. Both the phones have a non-removable 3000mAh battery. Xperia Z1 has a Li-ion variant while LG G2 has a Li-Po variant. The battery life of both these phones is great and you can easily get more than a day of usage.

In terms of connectivity, both the phones are equipped with WiFi(802.11 a/b/g/n/ac), DLNA, WiFi Direct, WiFi Hotspot, Bluetooth, TV out(via MHL), GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS, NFC, microUSB and USB OTG. However, only LG G2 has dual-band WiFi ensures faster WiFi speeds.

Conclusion

Sony Xperia Z1 is Sony’s first camera centric flagship and has the macho to stand up against the rest of the competition with top of the range specifications. LG G2 is regular flagship with top of the shelf specifications and a 13MP camera with OIS. Sony Xperia Z1 is currently available for Rs. 41,000 while you can get the LG G2 for Rs. 38,000(16 variant).