SONY XPERIA Z3 COMPACT D5803 16GB (FACTORY UNLOCKED) INTERNATIONAL MODEL- WHITE No-Warranty

Overall, this is the best phone I have ever used. Sony gets it and nailed all of the fundamentals. The waterproof camera and PS4 integration are icing on the cake. Note: Sony's bundled software should be removed immediately by installing the Google Now launcher and then disabling all of the bundled widgets and apps you don't want to use - it takes about 5 minutes to fix so this in no way affects my perspective here.AestheticsSony includes a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful live wallpaper that does not draw very much power. The device is completely unassuming so you don't need to worry if traveling with it and it being a giant golden shiny object.CameraI owned an iPhone 6+ before this, camera is as-good or better in favorable lighting situations and nearly as good in the dark. I swam in the ocean with this phone and took videos of Stingrays. The video came out surprisingly decent and the phone didn't break, so there's that.BatteryBest battery in any smart phone I have used in recent years and the best battery I have ever had in a touch-only / full screen phone. The LG Quantum, Blackberry, and AudioVox SMT5600 are comparable but these have tiny screens. For me, typical usage gets me 3-4 days. 3-4 days! Three to four days! On a powerful smart phone (more on that later). Even with the heaviest of heavy usage (surfing the web, playing games, etc) I have zero worries about running out of power.SizePhone feels perfect to me. I was a true believer in the "phablet" device category until I owned the 6+ and saw that the button and area above the speaker added giant vertical bezels. The Note II was bearable in the pocket but still could be frustrating to take out of the pocket - this phone sold me though, it's nice to have a big screen. Screen-wise though, this device has a great sized screen for its size. It has a larger screen than an iPhone 5 while remaining smaller and has a screen just .1" short of the iPhone 6 screen while remaining almost half an inch smaller vertically and a 1/10 an inch smaller in width. The thickness doesn't matter to me, anything thinner than this device becomes difficult for me to hold and I will take the extra 3 days of battery life any day. In short, you don't need a big phone to have a good sized screen.PerformanceMost devices like this (smart phones that are "smaller") have performance that is awful, remedial, puny, diminutive. In synthetic benchmarks, this phone can outperform a Samsung Galaxy S5. Boom.UpdatesSony has committed to updating the software at least to Android Lollypop ... but I would expect support to continue into the foreseeable future as Sony seems to be updating their entire line (e.g. Xperia Z1 from 18 months ago) to the latest Android versions. Sony is super developer friendly, offering AOSP builds for their entire line from http://developer.sonymobile.com/knowledge-base/open-source/open-devices. The current developer builds are Lollypop.GamingWorks with a PS4 controller giving you a better controller experience than ANY bluetooth controller on the market. Remote play on PS4 is awesome and looks and sounds as good as you would expect - playable just don't expect to be doing any competitive gaming over it.PriceI paid $500 for my phone, which is about $150-$350 less than a premium smart phone with similar features will cost you.I really hope that more manufacturers start making more phones like this, the balance of performance, camera, size, and battery are perfect.

I'm about as happy with this as I could ever be with a smart phone. I still miss my old flip phone with mechanical keys and the old T9 word no-eyes-needed texting, but alas smartphones do have many conveniences such as GPS and music playing.BATTERY LIFE: Fantastic, I get ~3 days from normal usage. THREE DAYS!SIZE: Slightly bigger than an iPhone 4s. Acceptable. I don't want an HDTV in my pocket.CALLS: No complaints, I use T-Mobile and get pretty good coverage and data rates in New Jersey.ANDROID: Upgraded to Lollipop, works fairly well, had some issues with getting some apps to use my microSD card correctly, was frustrating, but in the end got them to work. Google Maps etc. all work great. Slightly paranoid about Google in a 1984 kind of way. Annoys me to no end that the Amazon Prime app requires every permission from the operating system, including the ability to delete your account (yes, that's correct). I have not and don't plan to install the app until they release a Google Play friendly version. In general, Android is still less of a smooth experience (particularly when it comes to the touch interface) than Apple. Not taking away stars for these issues because they're not the fault of the phone manufacturer.MISC: Love that I can use a 128GB microSD card with this phone. I heard that screen cracks are common with this phone, so I got a case (Ringke Fusion) and I'm careful with it and so far so good in 3 months. No screen protector. Looks pretty. Nobody knows what phone this is, and that secretly makes me very happy inside. I can play music to my car via Bluetooth fairly easily. My car has steering wheel music controls which used to control my iPhone, I miss that, but I knew I was losing that when switching to Android. This phone also has an average EMF output which maybe will slightly reduce my risk of cancer. Who knows.SPEAKERS: Tinny and kind of crappy. Oh well.CAMERA: Pretty decent, not great in low light conditions, personally I don't take a lot of pictures with my phone so I don't really care much.