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GSMArena compares Xperia Z with Galaxy S4.
Samsung Galaxy S4 vs. Sony Xperia Z: When worlds collide - GSMArena.com
Hardware overview- Xperia Z Wins
->Xperia Z is great design, One of the Handsomest Phone, over the hyper glaze finish of Galaxy S4, unimpressive design and lack of premium feel.
-> Z has IP 57 Certified for dust & water resistance, non-user-replaceable battery, fingerprints marks on glass finish while Galaxy S4 is 16 grams lighter, 2mm shorter and 1mm narrower and has removable back over.
Screen comparison: Galaxy S4 Wins
-> S4 has better sunlight legibility and viewing angles than Z.
-> AMOLED Screen is better color saturation and contrast
-> Mobile Bravia Engine makes big difference while watching videos & images.
Battery Life : Galaxy S4 Wins
-> Talk Time Zs- 16:03 Vs 13:53- S4
-> Web Browsing Z - 6:37 Vs 8:42 -S4 (Its really surprising how Xperia Zs LCD is consuming more power than S4 during browsing).
-> Video Playback Z- 5:39 Vs 10:16 - S4
Benchmarks
-> Galaxy S4s Snapdragon 600 is more advanced design compared to Xperia Zs Snapdragon S4 so it will produce better benchmarks. The Exynos 5 Octa Model is not tested for review, its likely to perform better than Snapdragon 600.
Loudspeaker test and Audio quality: Galaxy S4 Wins
Z has 60.1 db Vs S4 70 db
The Xperia Z is not that far behind its rival here, though, and for most purposes the two can be considered on par.
Camera interface and features:Tie
-> The Sony Xperia Z settings looks better organized and makes framing easier, while the newly adopted camera UI of the Galaxy S4 takes time getting used to. The Samsung flagship however makes up for that with a number of advanced shooting modes.
Still Camera Comparision: Galaxy S4 Wins
First, let's talk Field of View (FoV), how much each camera captures. According to EXIF info, the Samsung Galaxy S4 camera is a 31mm (in 35mm equiv.), while the Sony Xperia Z is wider at 28mm. The difference is noticeable, but not too big a deal.
In the Superior Auto mode the Sony Xperia Z produces photos with pleasing, albeit slightly oversaturated colors. The images shot in Normal Auto, appear more natural and lack that overprocessed look. Since most of the users will use the default Superior Auto (which usually does better anyway), we shot our samples with this mode. Either way, though, the resolved detail is hardly spectacular and noticeably lower compared to Galaxy S4's samples and the noise levels are only average. There's also noticable purple fringing and while the dynamic range is on par between the two, the Galaxy S4 has the upper hand in terms of contrast.
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The Galaxy S4 exposes it low-light shots better than the Xperia Z's, no matter of the shooting mode. It lets in slightly more noise, but it also manages to preserve more detail and produce better colors than the Sony flagship. The Xperia Z picture quality improves though when set to shoot on Superior Auto (which automatically switch to Night Scene), in which case things are closer, but still slightly in favor of the Samsung flagship.
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The LED flash on the Samsung Galaxy S4 is a lot more powerful than the one used in the Sony Xperia Z and this is main reason for the disappointing indoor performance of Xperia Z when compared to the Galaxy S4.
And here come the 100% crops where you can clearly see the Galaxy S4 superiority.
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Finally, the cloudy weather was no sweat for the Samsung Galaxy S4 - more than enough detail, good colors and contrast, while the Sony Xperia Z got the exposure wrong and produced a noisy sample with an only average amount of fine detail
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Anyway, the Samsung Galaxy S4 is capable of shooting a full-res 360-degree panorama, which results in photos of about 60MP resolution (roughly 20000x3000px). The picture quality is amazing and stitching is very good. Because the Xperia Z can't do 360-degree panos, we only covered the same viewing angle with the two.
The Sony Xperia Z also offers very-well stitched panorama samples with good contrast, but that's the only good we can say. The detail could have been better, the resolution is very low at about 5000x1080px, and the whole thing looks more like a video screenshot (which it probably is given the resolution) rather than a shot worthy of a flagship.
Camcorder quality: Samsung Galaxy S4
The Galaxy S4 and the Xperia Z have some unique features too - the Galaxy S4 can pause and resume the video capturing and it does the cool dual-recording which lets you capture footage with its two cameras simultatenously. The Xperia Z on the other hand offers HDR video recording, but sadly enabling that doesn't do as big a difference as we hoped. It still adds some detail in the highlight areas, which can make the difference between a usable and a poor video on some occasions.
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Despite doing worse than the Galaxy S III, the Galaxy S4 was still able to outresolve the Xperia Z and produce generally more pleasing videos.
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