I'm not sure I ever received an email regarding an offer to review the Xperia Z3. I have the Xperia Z3v though and I was profoundly disappointed by the display, camera, UI, and design given just how much hype there was around the phone. The Xperia Z3v should be in at least a few of the test results as well.
I'd be happy to review the Xperia Z5 given the choice. However in light of the past performance seen by the Xperia Z1 and Z3v I did not believe that the Xperia Z5 would represent a clearly superior smartphone compared to the iPhone 6s or 6s Plus.
The Editor's Choice award requires at least two things to be fulfilled in order to even consider giving a device an award:
1. The smartphone, tablet, wearable, or other mobile device needs to be one of the best in its class. There cannot be a significant flaw in the mobile device. An example of this would be a poor camera, display, or SoC.
2. The device must have some new implementation of a feature that meaningfully improves the user experience in a way that is regularly used and noticeable. Looking back on why the One M7 received an EC award, it was clear that the combination of stereo front-facing speakers, all aluminum unibody design, and Ultrapixel camera addressed user experience problems in smartphones that were not necessarily implemented before. I felt that it was necessary to add this criteria to the award as well in order to ensure that we would not devalue the award.
If these two criteria are reached, the device should receive an EC Gold award. To receive an EC Platinum award, the mobile device must not have any flaws other than those that are limits of engineering and/or physics in addition to the criteria for EC Gold. Given that we haven't given any mobile device an EC Bronze award, we haven't looked deeply into what criteria will justify the award without devaluing it. I hope this helps to clarify our logic behind the awards.
-Joshua Ho
Hi Joshua,
Thanks a lot for contributing to this thread, and for doing so in a logical manner that lacks emotive elements that provoke certain responses.
In none of my posts have I argued that the z5 would be "clearly superior [overall]" to the iPhone 6s. Instead, my posts were designed to show that people writing "it's the best of the best" need to provide very heavyweight justifications for such a judgment.
In the 'final words' portion of your (joint) review, you claim:
(i) best soc in any phone today - agreed;
(ii) best user experience where gpu or cpu performance is a gating factor - that's carefully written, but "best user experience" means...fluidity? You're using a fact (best soc) to infer a value (best user experience) and that's a large step to take because of the words that you choose. I have put forward the arguments why in a thread which posed the question about why the Apple does not sell more iPhones than it already does.
(iii) you refer to the camera experience as 'just about the best' - and again this is carefully written because you're not outright claiming that the 6s takes the best photos simpliciter; you use 'experience' and 'just about' as qualifiers. In my experience, the z5 easily trades blows with the 6s in the quality of photos. Launching the camera app is slightly slower at times.
(iv) you refer to it being 'one of the best smartphones' - agreed.
My point is, that there is a massive gap between "one of the best" and "it's the best of the best".
If you were partly disappointed by the Z3v because of the "hype" around the phone, I'd be interested in your take on the phenomenon that exists around every single iPhone release, that causes people around the world to line up in the street to wait for them. I still use iPhones (trade devices with people at work) and I simply don't see the massive superiority that is conferred upon the devices. Especially the 6 plus, whose screen, camera and lack of battery life had me giddy every time I got my Z3 (not v) back.
I think that the 6s and 6s plus are solid improvements however I was dismayed to see the word "best" used so frequently throughout the review. And, with all due respect - if the battery life on the Z3v is the same as a Z3 - it's far superior to the 6 plus'. It's not really reflected in your benchmarks but for a business user with an exchange account on push, with hundreds of mails coming in a day, lots of screen time usage and web browsing, my experience shows 6 plus users tending to use battery packs and/or having their phone frequently plugged in whereas my Z3 easily outlasts the 6 plus for hours in the same usage situation.
It's a shame you did not receive an e-mail about reviewing the Z3, but I posted the offer here on the forums. I would have liked to buy a Z5 to ship to you for a review but it's pointless at this stage. It's a solid phone, with better battery life, photos, a great screen (including in daylight), and numerous reviews online have pointed this out - it's just interesting to me that so many refer to 'user experience' yet when I sit down with colleagues and ask them to show me how their phone is so vastly superior to mine it's tough going.
In short, my issue is with the prolific use of the word "best" - repeated enough on different aspects of the phone it reads as carefully drafted in order to cause posters like the one I referred to in my previous post to infer that the phone is simply "the best", when - from my view - it clearly is not. It is one of the best.