Sony Xperia Z3 vs Nexus 5: Specs comparison

Sony has just announced the Xperia Z3 smartphone, which replaces the less-than-a-year-old Xperia Z2 with a slimmer, lighter and more powerful handset. But is the Xperia Z3 any match for the Nexus 5? Should you buy the Xperia Z3 or the Nexus 5? Let's break down the specs differences and take a look.

Display

There's not a great deal of difference between the display specs of these two smartphones. The Xperia Z3 boasts an extra 0.25 inches for its display, but the Nexus 5 pips it in the ppi stakes. The Z3's TRILUMINOS technology and the Nexus 5's True HD IPS+ both claim to display high-definition colours in their most natural tones, but which is better? Our review of the Nexus 5 declared it an absolute pleasure to look at (opens in new tab) while we described the Z3 as "crisp". If we're honest, it's a relatively close one but we'd err towards the Nexus 5 for display quality.

Size and weight

Making a smartphone that is taller, wider and yet still thinner, Sony have certainly outdone Google in the size stakes. At nearly 1.3 mm slimmer than the Nexus 5, the Z3 is a veritable palm pleaser. It's significantly weightier though - a whole 22g in fact. But hey Sony users - maybe that's just what you have to deal with if you want a 20.7-megapixel camera in your smartphone.

Battery

The Z3 packs a 3,100 mAh battery. That's quite a jump from the Nexus 5's 2,300 mAh rating. Interestingly though it claims to offer only 14 hours 3G talktime, the Nexus claiming 17 hours. Perhaps that camera's exerting some power drain.

Cameras

Well, there's a reason why I already mentioned it twice. The Xperia Z3 contains a whopping 20.7-megapixel camera. That's 4 megapixels more than the Samsung Galaxy S5, let alone the puny 8-megapixel Nexus 5. 2.2-megapixel selfies certainly won't hurt anyone either!

Conclusion

Packing a Snapdragon 801 processor, 3GB RAM, 2.5 GHz clock speed and a frankly massive camera, with 4K video, the Sony Xperia Z3 looks to be a great contender for the top end of the Android smartphone market. Its features mostly outweigh those offered by the Nexus 5, though it physically outweighs it too. The Nexus 5 might just win out on image quality, but until further review, we'd wager that the display difference would be fairly marginal.

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Specifications