Software: Killer For All The Wrong Reasons

One of the most disappointing aspects about the Sony Xperia Z Ultra is the software. The phone runs a lightly skinned version of Android four.2 out of the box, although it fails to bring all the necessary large screen optimizations to a device that desperately needs them.

With a half-dozen.4-inch display in your hands, you want to be seeing more information that what you lot would get with a 5-inch, or 4.3-inch phone. The extra screen real manor allows more text, more images and more information to be seen at a glance, in a similar mode to a 10-inch tablet is amend for productivity than a 7-inch tablet. Every bit the Z Ultra falls in between high-cease phones and small tablets in terms of screen real manor, ideally you'd be wanting information density somewhere in between those ii types of devices.

In some aspects, Sony has provided these optimizations, for example, instead of your regular homescreen layout of a 4x4 filigree, the Z Ultra features a 6x6 gird, as well as six icons in the dock. This basically removed the necessity for me to utilize any more than one homescreen. Combined with a few lockscreen widgets, such as for emails and my calendar, I was able to see more data than I would on a phone like the HTC One.

The browser is another example of an application that is suited well to the large display.

Sony decided to bundle Chrome with the Ultra, rather than perfecting their own software, and information technology works well. Through gestures you can chop-chop swipe between tabs, and by rotating the phone I was frequently able to switch from a responsive mobile layout, to a total 1080p-optimized desktop layout. Thanks to the higher information density, I really used the browser more often than I would have on a smaller device.

Sony'due south Walkman music role player app is a piece of well-optimized software that should likewise be highlighted. The home pane of this app features a department of squares that select unlike subsections of your music, such as songs and artists, at the top, while the bottom has the list of whatever you've chosen. This layout makes managing and selecting music very like shooting fish in a barrel, specially when you have a large collection. The app also contains a number of useful options, such as a quick button for finding creative person info and music videos, which tin can come in handy.

So far then good, but other than those essentially every other app included with the Z Ultra is simply a scaled upwards version of the very same application I saw on the Xperia Z.

In most cases, Sony has made little to no attempt at modifying these apps to make ameliorate utilize of the larger display, relying largely on UI scaling, rather than introducing elements that might be handy, only would otherwise non fit on the Xperia Z's five-inch screen.

This leads to many apps being simply a huge list, such as the contacts app. In this app, there are quick shortcuts to message or call contacts, or large contact pictures, or more information almost the contact. Instead it's a long list of contact names, and clicking on any one of the contacts gives you lot another big listing of information.

You see this once more with the Calendar app: at the superlative is a standard filigree calendar, only the information density is low. Sure you take an calendar below it, which you can resize, simply at a glance information technology's difficult to tell what you lot have on each twenty-four hours in the calendar month, despite having enough screen real estate to evidence this. The notification pane is a similar story of low-density information on a big display, and it's actually disappointing to run into.

Unlike most smartphones in the 5-inch or less category, the Xperia Z Ultra basically requires you to set the font size to large (it is by default). Similar with first-party apps and a lack of large-screen optimizations, it'due south font issues and strange scaling that kills 3rd-party apps. A number of my favorite apps, such equally 1 for the Australian Football game League, feature fonts and then large that it wouldn't trouble the elderly, while others are small windows on a massive brandish, or feature broken elements.

Withal, to exist fair, a majority of 3rd-party apps simply human action like large smartphone apps or pocket-size-screen tablet apps, which is to exist expected. Most of the time this is exactly what you desire, like with the Twitter, Gmail and Feedly apps, and I wasn't really expecting any specific phablet modes in Play Store apps.

Another aspect of the software that's disappointing is the lack of a skillful starting time-party note-taking app. Southward Note is a fantastic Samsung-fabricated inclusion on the Galaxy Note, and Sony's 'Notes' app is simply not up to scratch. Substantially, it's simply a basic text input awarding, including some uncomplicated formatting options and the ability to accept voice notes. Nothing special, and nothing that makes me want to employ it over a 3rd-party alternative such every bit Evernote.

Alongside the Notes app is a split up cartoon application called 'Sketch', which once again is a bones cartoon app with different pen types, back up for embedding images, and a few absurd stamps. Why Sony didn't merge the Notes and Sketch apps together is beyond me, because the ability to take notes with the keyboard and and so annotate them with a stylus is critical to productive note-taking. The phone even comes with a specific feature allowing you to utilize a pencil every bit a stylus for note, even so the annotation-taking app doesn't allow you to practise this.

Like with a number of stylus-supporting smartphones, the Xperia Z Ultra has handwriting recognition. It's not faster, and information technology's not more accurate than using the keyboard, and so like every other phone that has it, there is still no reason to use it. Enough said.

The terminal feature I'd like to mention is Sony's multi-tasking windows, which put a small version of some apps in a resizable window that y'all can move around the display. Attainable from the Recent Apps carte du jour, the windowed versions of apps such equally the browser, computer and Notes can exist handy, but I didn't discover myself using them all that often. Often it was just easier, or it made more sense to switch between full versions of apps using the chore switcher, and the limited selection of windowed apps didn't actually fit with my general phone usage.

At the end of the day, Sony'south implementation of software on the Xperia Z Ultra is poor. Apps and the interface aren't optimized for the 6.four-inch brandish, and the lack of a potent note-taking app on a phone built (in part) for notation-taking is extremely disappointing. Sony's skin may be visually appealing in some respects, just it's the lack of features that really lets the software down.