Xperia Z3 unveiled with 2 day battery life and PS4 Remote Play

Sony has officially announced the Xperia Z3 (D66XX) at IFA 2014 with particular highlights including a 2 day battery life and exclusive PS4 Remote Play. The Xperia Z3 has a 3100mAh battery. Sony hasn’t gone into too much detail on how it has achieved a two day battery life, only referring to “unique power-saving technologies”.

PS4 Remote Play allows you to stream from the PlayStation 4 onto a mobile smartphone for the first time. This feature will remain a Sony Xperia exclusive which is a great way to differentiate from competitors. Sony has created a GCM10 Game Control Mount for the DUALSHOCK4 controller, which means you can mount your phone onto the game pad.

The Xperia Z3 does have more emphasis on the audio side, with more prominently placed stereo speakers (S-Force Front Surround) on the front and the support of Hi-Res Audio, Digital Noise Cancelling and DSEE HX audio upscaling. DSEE HX upscales your MP3/AAC music collection to near High-Resolution quality as well as playlists on Sony’s Music Unlimited service.

As seen in the many leaks, the Xperia Z3 sports a rounded aluminium frame. All of the Xperia Z3 series adopt the highest level of water and dust resistance with an IP rating of IP65/IP68.

The phone features the same 1/2.3-inch 20.7MP Exmor RS sensor as the Xperia Z2, including BIONZ™ for mobile processing engine and ISO 12,800 sensitivity. However, Sony says that the Xperia Z3 includes a new a 25mm wide angle “G Lens”. The Xperia Z3 also has a 2.2MP front-facing camera.

In terms of hard specs, the Xperia Z3 has a 5.2-inch (1080 x 1920) TRILUMINOS display with Live Colour LED and X-Reality for mobile. This relates to a 424 PPI pixel density and screen-to-phone ratio of 70.91% (ahead of the Xperia Z2 at 69.28%). It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 (MSM8974AC) chipset with 2.5 GHz quad-core processor and Adreno 330 graphics. Other specifications include 3GB RAM, 16GB internal storage (the T-Mobile US model will get 32GB) and microSD memory card support.

The Xperia Z3 has dimensions of 146 x 72 x 7.3 mm with a weight of 152 grams. Comparing this with the Xperia Z2 (146.8 x 73.3 x 8.2 mm and 163 gram) shows the impressive work that Sony’s engineers have done in reducing thickness and weight. The phone will launch with Android 4.4.4 KitKat in a choice of four colours (white, black, copper or silver green) later this month. A dual SIM variant of the Xperia Z3 will be on offer in select markets.