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Sony's New Z3 range announced
- Thread starter apolloa
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Thanks for the pictures. Would be great if you can take some low light ones
There's still a few hours of daylight here so here's some with and without the flash and the curtains closed even then it was pretty dark.
Thank you for posting the pictures! If the Z3 comes to the US (AT&T) this will be my next phone!
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Z3 review update:
So my gf just got back from a weekend trip and showed me the photos she'd taken with her new Z3. Unfortunately I have to report that they were pretty much all out of focus. These were photos from all kinds of situations, good lighting, low light, outdoors and indoors.
She's not camera savvy in any way and all she does is pull out the phone and snap. But I have to admit that the photos she used to take with her old iPhone 4S were usually very well focused. My own experience with the 4S vs the Note 2 was similar - the Note 2 was pretty bad at quick autofocusing.
So, much as I'd like to report all good stuff about the Z3 camera it does look like it doesn't handle this kind of photo taking very well. Now I haven't tested the iPhone 6/Plus much myself but given my experience with the 4S I would wager that it does much better than the Z3 in these situations.
Again though - this is photo taking without making any effort at all, just pulling the thing out and snapping. Taking a few seconds to tap the screen or half-press the camera button will yield a much different result, this I know from my own tests. And the colors and contrast in my gf's low light shots were all very good for a phone camera. But for "shooting from the hip" photos, it looks like the Z3 isn't king.
So my gf just got back from a weekend trip and showed me the photos she'd taken with her new Z3. Unfortunately I have to report that they were pretty much all out of focus.
These were photos from all kinds of situations, good lighting, low light, outdoors and indoors.She's not camera savvy in any way and all she does is pull out the phone and snap. But I have to admit that the photos she used to take with her old iPhone 4S were usually very well focused. My own experience with the 4S vs the Note 2 was similar - the Note 2 was pretty bad at quick autofocusing.
So, much as I'd like to report all good stuff about the Z3 camera it does look like it doesn't handle this kind of photo taking very well. Now I haven't tested the iPhone 6/Plus much myself but given my experience with the 4S I would wager that it does much better than the Z3 in these situations.
Again though - this is photo taking without making any effort at all, just pulling the thing out and snapping. Taking a few seconds to tap the screen or half-press the camera button will yield a much different result, this I know from my own tests. And the colors and contrast in my gf's low light shots were all very good for a phone camera. But for "shooting from the hip" photos, it looks like the Z3 isn't king.
Z3 review update:
So my gf just got back from a weekend trip and showed me the photos she'd taken with her new Z3. Unfortunately I have to report that they were pretty much all out of focus.
She's not camera savvy in any way and all she does is pull out the phone and snap. But I have to admit that the photos she used to take with her old iPhone 4S were usually very well focused. My own experience with the 4S vs the Note 2 was similar - the Note 2 was pretty bad at quick autofocusing.
So, much as I'd like to report all good stuff about the Z3 camera it does look like it doesn't handle this kind of photo taking very well. Now I haven't tested the iPhone 6/Plus much myself but given my experience with the 4S I would wager that it does much better than the Z3 in these situations.
Again though - this is photo taking without making any effort at all, just pulling the thing out and snapping. Taking a few seconds to tap the screen or half-press the camera button will yield a much different result, this I know from my own tests. And the colors and contrast in my gf's low light shots were all very good for a phone camera. But for "shooting from the hip" photos, it looks like the Z3 isn't king.
That is the way 99% of us will use any smartphone camera. Unfortunately this is what I am reading alot about over at XDA forums as well. Most are saying they can take great pictures with the Z3 but it requires a lot of effort to do so.
This will likely be a deal breaker for me. I am no photographer.........so i depend on my camera to be able to point and shoot quickly and get the shot right....
It's the U.S. carriers fault that Sony doesn't has a market share. Just like Nokia in their heydays 2003-2007 with their high end N series or business based E series. Carriers in the USA like to tinker and put lots of carrier related bloat ware on phones. Nokia did not like that.
Even Samsung with the Galaxy S1 and S2 in the USA. Carriers in the USA totally butchered those versions. They all had different names and different form factors. Verizon Samsung Galaxy s1 was powered by bing.com search engine. Sprint Galaxy S1 had a physical keyboard. It was a mess. Also used different processors as well.
Finally when Samsung gained market share with the Galaxy S3 did usa carriers finally release one S3 version. Samsung had to significantly discount the S1 and S2 to carriers as well. It's no secret when Sprint former CEO stated his company paid 40% more for the iPhone than any other phone. Considering the msrp of the iphone is not 40% more than the Galaxy s2 at that time. One can easily deduce Samsung was discounting their phones to carriers to gain market share.
Sony is very much like Apple. That's why Steve Jobs respected the company. Sony doesn't like to discount as well. They also don't want carriers in USA butchering their phones as well. The line in the sand has been drawn with Sony and the USA carriers.
I had a Z1 Compact for 3 months. The one thing that I was most impressed with it was its camera. I'll attach a shot I randomly found on my cloud drive. Completely effortless and fast, without the nasty smearing of details the iPhone 6 exhibits. The Z1C had the best camera out of all phones I had. I'll be picking up a Z3C, and I expect it to at least equal the Z1C.
Using the stock camera app, the iPhone 6 is near the bottom in quality out of most phone cameras I had, right off the top of my head only the HTC One and iPhone 3GS were worse. Apple cranked up the noise reduction way too far on the iPhone 6. I've had every iPhone since the 3GS. The iPhone 4 to 5s did not exhibit the smearing as the 6 does (never mind that the 4-5 were much slower, I'm just strictly talking about picture quality). Every photo even in bright daylight looks like a water painting, although it can be worked around using a 3rd party camera app. See this pic for the severe smearing of details on the iPhone 6.
BTW, I used 8MP on the Z1C at all times. The 20MP pictures can look just as bad as the iPhone 6. Having the large (for a phone) 20MP sensor affords the luxury of downsampling for a beautiful 8MP picture.
Using the stock camera app, the iPhone 6 is near the bottom in quality out of most phone cameras I had, right off the top of my head only the HTC One and iPhone 3GS were worse. Apple cranked up the noise reduction way too far on the iPhone 6. I've had every iPhone since the 3GS. The iPhone 4 to 5s did not exhibit the smearing as the 6 does (never mind that the 4-5 were much slower, I'm just strictly talking about picture quality). Every photo even in bright daylight looks like a water painting, although it can be worked around using a 3rd party camera app. See this pic for the severe smearing of details on the iPhone 6.
BTW, I used 8MP on the Z1C at all times. The 20MP pictures can look just as bad as the iPhone 6. Having the large (for a phone) 20MP sensor affords the luxury of downsampling for a beautiful 8MP picture.
Z3 review update:
So my gf just got back from a weekend trip and showed me the photos she'd taken with her new Z3. Unfortunately I have to report that they were pretty much all out of focus.
She's not camera savvy in any way and all she does is pull out the phone and snap. But I have to admit that the photos she used to take with her old iPhone 4S were usually very well focused. My own experience with the 4S vs the Note 2 was similar - the Note 2 was pretty bad at quick autofocusing.
So, much as I'd like to report all good stuff about the Z3 camera it does look like it doesn't handle this kind of photo taking very well. Now I haven't tested the iPhone 6/Plus much myself but given my experience with the 4S I would wager that it does much better than the Z3 in these situations.
Again though - this is photo taking without making any effort at all, just pulling the thing out and snapping. Taking a few seconds to tap the screen or half-press the camera button will yield a much different result, this I know from my own tests. And the colors and contrast in my gf's low light shots were all very good for a phone camera. But for "shooting from the hip" photos, it looks like the Z3 isn't king.
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Probably the reason the only carrier they deal with is T-mobile. They do not add bloat to certain phones.
Yes. Sony is way behind Samsung these days. They may have to suck up their pride and ego. Let the carriers put bloat ware and also significantly discount their phones (compared to msrp) to the carriers. At least until they gain market share.
that would be a good strategy for them for the short term until they gain more markets share back.....
Ya, same here. That's why I often (secretly) bring along my old 4S even when carrying my Note 2...the 4S is just more reliable for quick snaps. Really a disappointment that the Z3 seems not so good in this respect, it's such a great phone in practically every other way
Sorry to hear that about the iP6. As I said I only assumed it would be better since the 4S was so good in its time. Hopfully the Z3 Compact is better than the Z3 for quick autofocus!
Anyone know more about the event that's suppose to take place today? I heard a while ago that Sony was going to make US centric announcement, but haven't heard anything since.
Well, here's a liveblog: http://live.cnet.com/Event/Sonys_Demand_Great_event?Page=0
Looks like the event was only for the Verizon exclusive Z3v.
Looks like the event was only for the Verizon exclusive Z3v.
Coming to VZW on Oct 23rd..... no announcement on the TMO release date.
Not coming to AT&T or Sprint.....
Very disappointed. I thought there would be multiple phone announcements and we got just one exclusive for Verizon. At least it was the full size Z3, so maybe there's still some hope for the Z3c on AT&T.
Yeah, that's the phone (Z3c) that I am eyeing for my dad on AT&T, but I'm also disappointed that the Z3 is exclusive.
i'm pretty psyched to get the Z3 Tablet Compact. I'm hoping I can get an LTE version with 32GB, some website I looked at showed them as future stock so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
