Sony Xperia Z5 Premium vs Samsung Galaxy Note 5: Time for some Japan vs Korea action!

| Updated: Wednesday, October 21, 2015, 18:31 [IST]

Sony finally launched a flagship device dubbed the Xperia Z5 Premium at this year's IFA. In a desperate bid to make a mark in the smartphone industry, the Xperia Z5 Premium is Japanese OEM's answer to the premium phablet segment killer the Note5.

Sony has been talking of the upcoming flagship for long - ever since the launch of the Xperia Z3+ in June. A company official had then stated that the Xperia Z3+ wasn't actually their flagship for 2015, instead the true flagship is in the making. And finally the Xperia Z5 has incepted! At a hefty price tag of equivalent to Rs 60,000 will the Xperia Z5 Premium be an ideal competitor for the Samsung Galaxy Note5? Let's find out!

Sony Xperia Z5 Premium vs Samsung Galaxy Note 5: Battle of Flagships

Design:

Both the phone come with familiar design languages - ones we have seen in previous flagship from the two companies. While the Note5 embodies the metal chassis and curved glass design of the Galaxy S6, the Xperia Z5 Premium uses the Omnibalance design language of Xperia flagships.

The new back panel though looks, unlike the glass panels generally seen in the back of existing Xperia flagships of present day. But that was bound to be, considering Sony is dubbing their flagship as premium. The USP of Xperia Z5 Premium though lies in the IP68 waterproof and dustproof certification. Sony claims that the device can last 30 minutes in 1.5 m deep water.

Display:

Sony has a real winner in terms of the display when it comes with the Xperia Z5 Premium. The Japanese OEM has managed to fit in a 5.5 inch 4K (3840x2160) display into the Z5 with the whopping 806ppi! With the inception of 4K display in smartphones are we moving into an age when Quad HD too will appear passe?

Nevertheless, 5.7 inch Samsung's Note5 display isn't too bad! Rather it's awesome, provided you won't mind remembering those geeky ppis. The AMOLED display renders punchy colours with excellent viewing angles.

Performance:

This is an aspect which was bound to be different. Off late Samsung has been solely using their very own Exynos SoCs in their high end flagships and that's not different when it comes to the Note5.

Samsung Galaxy Note5 features an Exynos 7420 octa-core SoC (Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & Quad-core 2.1 GHz Cortex-A57) along with Mali-T760MP8 GPU. Sony on the other hand used the only option available on their platter i.e. the Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 coupled with a Adreno 430 GPU. With Qualcomm 820 not available commercially as of yet, Sony hardly had any choice but to use this powerful SoC which has been riddled with a no of heating issue complaints.

The RAM used in the Xperia Z5 Premium isn't quite premium though, considering the fact that it uses a 3GB of RAM as compared to the 4GB found on the Note5.

Camera:

Sony has always dominated the camera segment of mobile devise either be it in their own Xperia devices or via their own camera sensors used in devices of other OEMs. And with Xperia Z5 Premium things aren't rather different. The Xperia Z5 Premium uses a 23MP PDAF camera using Sony's latest Hybrid Focus Technology with LED flash. The Note5 on the other hand carries over the same 16MP f1.9 unit from Galaxy S6.

For selfies the Xperia Z5 Premium uses a 5.1 MP as compared to the 5MP on Note5. Hence not much is different.

Others:

The battery on the Xperia Z5 Premium is a little larger a 3430mAh than the 3000mAh unit found in the Note.5 However this difference in the battery capacity was expected considering the fact that the Z5 Premium uses a higher resolution display.

In terms of security both the devices use a fingerprint readers. NFC too is present, with Samsung Note5 coming with Samsung Pay support. As expected Sony Xperia Z5 Premium doesn't come with a Stylus S Pen like seen on the Note5. It however sports dual front firing speakers.

Nevertheless both devices run on Android Lollipop 5.1.1. with their own custom UIs on top.