Apple iPhone 6

After years of mocking rivals for producing larger and larger screens, and sticking to its pocket-sized principles, Apple finally caved in this year, introducing not one larger-screened model, but two: the iPhone 6 with a 4.7in screen, and the iPhone 6 Plus with a 5.5in screen. It's quite a climbdown on Apple's part, but it had to do it: another year with only a 4in screen on its flagship phone and consumers would have voted with their feet, steadily trickling away to Samsung, HTC, and LG's larger-screened alternatives. See also: the 17 best smartphones of 2015.
In reality, Apple shouldn't have been so frightened to make the move, because neither of the new phones feels out of place in today's large-screen-obsessed smartphone market.

Apple iPhone 6: size and design

The iPhone 6, the smaller of the two phones, is the one that works best. Apple has gone back to rounded edges this time around, moving away from the dead straight sides of the previous four handsets (the edges of the glass on the front are slightly curved, too), and this works to create an impression that the phone is smaller than it is. It's comfortable to hold, doesn't feel too slippery in your hand – an accusation we could level at the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s – and the 4.7in screen size feels just right.

If you've been worried about the jump in screen size from the 5s' 4in diagonal, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about once you get your hands on the iPhone 6. Yes, it's taller, wider and a touch heavier than its predecessor at 129g, but it's far from unwieldy, even when slotted into one of Apple's wraparound leather cases. In fact, the extra size means it's easier to use in some respects: typing accurately, for instance, becomes far easier thanks to the larger onscreen keys, and using the iPhone 6 as a satnav in the car is a far more pleasurable experience with the extra screen real estate.
The sheer thinness of the handset makes it pretty comfortable to hold, too. It measures only 7.1mm from front to back, 0.5mm slimmer than the iPhone 5s, and in the current smartphone market it's out-skinnied only by the skeletal Huawei Ascend P7 (6.5mm).
Apple has put some thought into helping those who just don't get on with the size of the new phone: a light double-tap on the home button slides the whole screen down, allowing one-handed access to icons, buttons and address menus located in the top half of the screen. However, after several months of use, we don't really think it's needed. We can count the number of times we've deliberately engaged it on the fingers of one hand; in fact, after a while we simply forgot the iPhone had grown, and got on with life. We certainly wouldn't want to go back to the tiny iPhone 5s.

Aside from the size, there are a couple of other physical changes to take note of. The power button has moved from the top edge of the device to the side, simultaneously making it easier to reach and also a little easier to hit by mistake when picking up the phone. The volume buttons are long and slim instead of circular, which makes them a touch easier to find without looking, and there's now a single speaker grille on the bottom edge of the phone, where the iPhone 5s had a pair.
The oddest change to the design, however, is the protruding camera lens, which sticks out around a millimetre from the rear of the case. In everyday use, you probably won't notice it: it doesn't stick out far enough to catch on the lip of your pocket when sliding it in and out, you won't feel it when holding the phone and if you put your iPhone 6 in a case the point is moot anyway.
The only major concern is for those who prefer to enjoy their iPhone in the metal; with the lens bearing the brunt of the impact every time you slap the phone down on a flat, hard surface, we have concerns about how long it will last.

Apple iPhone 6: display

The sleek industrial design is accompanied by a swathe of upgrades to the hardware inside, but it's the screen that makes the biggest impact. Along with the increase in size, Apple has boosted the iPhone 6's resolution to 750 x 1,344, giving a pixel density of 327ppi (a mere fraction higher than the iPhone 5s' 326ppi), and it looks pin-sharp.
Brightness, contrast and colour accuracy are also all exemplary, with the iPhone reaching a maximum brightness of 585cd/m², gaining an eye-popping 1,423:1 contrast ratio, a highly impressive colour accuracy rating with a Delta E of 1.74, and sRGB coverage of 95%. That contrast ratio is particularly impressive, and a significant improvement on the 5s' 972:1, lending onscreen images a little more depth and dynamism.

There's one small caveat to all this, however. On our sample model, we noticed a dim strip around 5mm thick running along the top of the screen. Initially we didn't spot it thanks to the clutter of menus, but when we dropped into the full-screen reading view on the Kindle app, it became immediately apparent. It's a shame, since aside from this, the iPhone 6's display is as good as we've seen on any smartphone.

Apple iPhone 6: performance

Behind the screen, the changes are even more dramatic. The iPhone 6, along with its big brother, sports a new dual-core A8 CPU, with 1GB of RAM, upgraded graphics and an improved M8 motion coprocessor (that's the low-power chip designed to save energy by monitoring the phone's sensors). There are models with 16GB, 64GB and 128GB of storage (but, oddly, no 32GB model), and Apple has added a barometer to the phone's line-up of sensors, for more accurate reporting of relative altitude and atmospheric pressure.
It comes as little surprise to find that the iPhone 6 feels completely smooth in general use. We noticed no judder or hitching while moving around in iOS 8, browsing graphics-heavy web pages, or panning and zooming in Google or Apple Maps. Given that iOS 8 runs smoothly on the two-generations-old hardware in the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5c, that much is to be expected. However, the performance of the new processor in benchmarks is dramatically quicker than any of its predecessors. We started with the simple, single-threaded SunSpider JavaScript test, which the iPhone 6 dispatched in 347ms. Only the Samsung Galaxy S5 gets close to this, with a time of 391ms.

Moving on to the slightly more demanding Peacekeeper benchmark, we saw a score of 2,533 – way in front of every other smartphone we've tested. It's the same story in Geekbench 3, with a single-core score of 1,631 that wipes the floor with everything else, and a multi-core score that's only marginally beaten by the quad-core Qualcomm hardware in the Samsung Galaxy S5. Given that the iPhone 6 has half the number of cores as the Samsung, it's still a seriously impressive showing. And as for the GFXBench T-Rex HD gaming test, there's simply no competition: the only phone capable of beating the iPhone 6's 51fps is the iPhone 6 Plus, which averaged a silky smooth 53fps despite its higher-resolution Full HD screen.

Apple iPhone 6: battery life

Perhaps more importantly, battery life is also excellent. The new, more efficient 20nm CPU clearly helps here: playing a 720p video with flight mode on and the screen set to a brightness of 120cd/m2, the battery depleted at 7.5% per hour, while streaming audio continuously from our SoundCloud account over 3G with the screen off reduced capacity at 1.7% per hour. The former result isn't all that special: plenty of other phones we've seen perform at this level or better, notably the Sony Xperia Z2 (5.6%), Samsung Galaxy S5 (5.2%) and the HTC One M8 (6.5%). But none of these handsets can match the iPhone 6's results in the 3G streaming test, a figure that points at highly impressive standby performance.
Even in continuous use, though, the iPhone 6 is one of the longest-lasting phones out there. In one morning, the battery dropped from 100% to only 84% during four hours of heavy testing. In that time, we streamed a podcast for 1hr 32mins, downloaded and installed the Facebook and Twitter apps, ran the Peacekeeper benchmark twice and the SunSpider browser test once, received a short phone call, and replied to a handful of texts. During this period the display was on constantly. This is a phone that will easily get you through a day and a half of moderate to light use and, if you're careful, two full days is not beyond it.

As with most smartphones, this does depend on your usage, and one thing that hits battery life hard is gaming. In the GFXBench battery test, which loops a 3D OpenGL animation for around half an hour and then estimates total runtime, the iPhone 6 achieved a total runtime of 2hrs 29mins. That's an improvement over the iPhone 5s' 1hr 52mins (impressive given how many more frames the phone is rendering), but it still indicates that graphics-heavy gaming will lead to a significantly shorter time span between charging sessions.
Elsewhere, Apple has added NFC to the iPhone 6, which is used solely for the Apple Pay touch credit-card payment system – it isn't used for Bluetooth pairing. It's an interesting development that could eventually see you paying for your morning coffee by tapping your phone to a card reader, and uses the phone's Touch ID fingerprint reader in conjunction with your credit-card details to provide increased security. Since the system won't arrive in the UK until early 2015 at the earliest, however, we don't think it's anything to get worked up about. You'll still need your plastic for the foreseeable future.
We're much more interested in the move, finally, to 802.11ac from 802.11n. Connection speed is a maximum of 433Mbits/sec, so it's single stream, and at close range using the FileBrowser app to transfer a large movie file from shared NAS storage to the iPhone, we saw roughly twice the speed from the iPhone 6 over the 5s, with transfer rates hovering between 7.5MB/sec and 8.5MB/sec over 802.11ac compared to between 6MB/sec and 7MB/sec for the 5s over 802.11n.

Apple iPhone 6: cameras

On paper, the camera isn't a huge upgrade from last year's flagship. You get an 8-megapixel 1/3in backside-illuminated CMOS sensor with 1.5 micron photo sites, and an aperture of f/2.2 – the same as the 5s. It's accompanied by Apple's True Tone flash so indoor shots don't look horribly washed out and ghostly.
The difference is that the camera now sports a number of phase-detect autofocus pixels on the surface of the sensor, in a similar fashion to the Galaxy S5 and many enthusiast and high-end SLR cameras, enabling much faster autofocus.

In practice, what this means is that the iPhone 6 will almost instantly transition from focusing on a subject that's far away to one that's really close, where the iPhone 5s would take a second or so. This isn't such a dramatic upgrade for taking photographs, but it makes a big difference with video: the highly effective digital stabilisation and super-quick focusing combine to produce stunning Full HD video, with much less focus hunting.
Alas, the other major upgrade – optical image stabilisation – is restricted to the iPhone 6's big brother, the iPhone 6 Plus. Even there, Apple is restricting its use to low-light conditions and stills. It isn't used in video mode, presumably to save on battery life.

What this all boils down to is that most of what we said about the iPhone 5s' rear camera still holds true of the iPhone 6's. It produces clean, detailed and well-exposed photographs in most conditions, but isn't quite as good as the Nokia Lumia 1020 in low light.
Its digital image stabilisation remains excellent, and produces smooth, shake-free videos. The only difference is that the iPhone 6's improved processing engine tends to apply less aggressive noise-reduction settings, leading to slightly grainier but more detailed photos in low light.

The front-facing camera, or "selfie" camera as we're encouraged to label it these days, also gains from a small improvement. Although resolution remains the same at 1.2 megapixels, the aperture is now a wide f/2.2, which lets in "81% more light", and there's also a burst mode to help capture your best side. It produces more detailed, cleaner self-portraits in low light, but in brighter conditions you'll struggle to tell the difference between the iPhone 6 and the 5s.
To round things off, Apple has added a handful of features to the camera front-end. Top of the list is a timelapse video feature, which produces top-quality sped-up footage, and there's also an additional Slo-mo mode, which captures video at 240fps – twice the frame rate of the iPhone 5s. This is an impressive achievement for a smartphone camera, and the resulting videos look incredible.

Apple iPhone 6: Apple iOS 8

Of course, it wouldn't be an iPhone launch without an upgrade to the software and there's plenty to get your teeth stuck into with iOS 8.
Headline features include the ability to respond to messages directly from the pull-down notifications menu, meaning you don't have to leave the app you're using when you receive a text. The scope of the iPhone's Spotlight search has expanded to include results from the web and the App Store as well as items in your iTunes library; the Photos gallery app now boasts a hugely improved range of editing tools; and the camera app has live onscreen exposure adjustment.
Family Sharing finally makes it possible to share apps and other iTunes purchases with family members, so you don't up paying twice. Up to six members of your household are covered. Family Sharing also makes it possible to let your kids own an iPod or iPhone and associate it with an Apple ID of their own. We found the system worked perfectly when we tried it, even with a fifth generation iPod restricted to iOS 6, setting it up so our test subject was able to browse and select apps for purchase, but only download and install those apps with parental approval from another device.
Open keyboard support lets you install alternative keyboards such as SwiftKey and Swype, however this isn't the best implemented feature in iOS 8. Some apps seem to override the keyboard you've chosen, and it's all too easy to switch back to the standard iOS 8 keyboard by accident. It's just as well that Apple has also improved the default keyboard, then, with multiple word suggestions that appear in a row immediately above the keyboard, rather than the fiddly bubbles that used to appear next to the word you were typing.
Elsewhere, the terrifyingly comprehensive Health app is designed to hook into all your fitness software, although we haven't yet seen any of our favourite third-party apps – such as Strava, RunKeeper and Zombies, Run – take advantage. iCloud Drive finally brings unified cloud storage to iCloud for documents; support for this is built into Pages and Numbers from the start, and other developers can also tap into it.
It isn't all good news, though. As with most new operating system releases, iOS 8 has had its fair share of bugs since it, but some are quite serious: our iPhone 6 Plus would drop its Wi-Fi connection every two to three hours and then fail to find any Wi-Fi networks to reconnect to. An update fixed our problem, but many users of older devices had to wait until iOS 8.1.1 before a fix to their Wi-Fi woes was delivered.

Apple iPhone 6: new features in iOS 8 updates

Fortunately, Apple hasn't only been fixing bugs since the iOS 8 was introduced. Several new features have been added as well, most of which are focussed on helping iOS devices integrate more tightly with Macs running OS X Yosemite. It's now possible to receive and reply to SMS messages across all your Apple devices, for instance, and Instant Hotspot allows your Mac to tether to your iPhone's data connection with a single click - with no need to activate the feature on the handset.
The old Photo Stream app has now been replaced by the beta of iCloud Photo Library. This makes it possible to view all your photos via a browser at iCloud.com, and also removes the 1000-photo restriction of Photo Stream - given enough iCloud storage you can store as many photos as you want.
Support for Apple Pay has finally arrived, too - or at least it has if you're based in the US. Sadly, the UK will have to wait until later in 2015 to take advantage of Apple's contactless payment system.

Apple iPhone 6 review: verdict

The iPhone 6 is a thorough pleasure to use. An iPhone with a larger screen works very well indeed, so much so that we wonder why Apple didn't do it sooner. But the question is: has Apple done enough? In some respects, we'd say they have: battery life is excellent, the display largely superb, the camera as good as any we've seen bar the Lumia 1020, and when it comes to performance, the iPhone 6 kicks every other smartphone on the market into touch.
But, once again, it's undermined by Apple's intransigence on price and upgradability. Supplying only 16GB in a phone that costs £539 SIM-free and commands a huge premium on contract is mean beyond belief, and the fact there's no storage expansion simply compounds the problem. In truth, we wouldn't consider shelling out on anything less than the 64GB iPhone 6 and, at £619 inc VAT, that's substantially more expensive than any other flagship handset out there.
Yet, despite those qualms, the iPhone 6 is so accomplished that to not give it some sort of acknowledgement would be churlish. The Apple iPhone 6 is a superb all-round handset, and at least as good as anything on the market right now – if you can afford it, you won't be disappointed.

Samsung Galaxy S5

We wondered where the world's number one smartphone maker could possibly go with the Samsung Galaxy S5. The Galaxy S4's 5in screen was already hitting the pocketable limit, and with so much tech already squeezed into that phone there surely wasn't much room for attention-grabbing extras. We were wrong. See also: the 15 best smartphones of 2014.
Still, cast a glance over the S5's key specs and you might come to the same conclusion. Aside from the usual processor upgrade, from the quad-core 1.9GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 of last year's model to the top-of-the-range, quad-core Snapdragon 801, there's no whizz-bang upgrade to match the quirky duo-camera of its major rival, the HTC One (M8), nor a radical rethink of design.
There are some differences. The plastic panel at the rear has changed from gloss to soft touch, there are new colours to choose from - including a dubious-looking gold - and Samsung has bumped up the screen to 5.1in. Visit: the best Android phones of 2014 too.

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Below the screen is a physical home button, flanked by two capacitive buttons; one for back and another for accessing the recent apps list. The display remains ringed with a ridged, chrome-effect band, with the power and volume buttons in the same positions on the right and left edges. The rear panel is still removable, giving access to SIM, microSD slots beneath, and a user-replaceable battery.
A closer examination of the specs reveals that the new phone is 15g heavier, and a touch taller and wider. For a more radical comparison you need to sit the S5 next to the HTC One (M8); the S5 is lighter, shorter, slightly wider, and - to our eyes at least - far less attractive.

Tricks and tweaks

Yet Samsung has made a number of changes: mostly small, but which add up to a major upgrade overall. Flip the rear cover off and examine the underside of the thin plastic back, and you'll see evidence of the S5's water- and dust-resistant protection: a thin rubber strip sealing in the sensitive components.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 is IP67 rated, which indicates the phone is protected against dust ingress, and can be submerged in water up to a metre for 30 minutes. Anyone who has ever dropped their phone in the sink, bath or toilet, or who's soaked their phone in a heavy rainstorm, will attest to the fact that this is a feature well worth having.

The familiar home button hides another new feature: a fingerprint reader for unlocking the phone, similar to that of the Apple iPhone 5s. It's less convenient than Apple's touch-recognition approach, though. Only three fingerprints can be registered, and you need to swipe your finger across the button for it to work. As a result, we found it tricky to unlock the unit one-handed.
Then there's the heart-rate monitor, located just below the camera on the rear of the phone. This is more sensibly positioned. With the phone cradled in your left or right hand, the sensor falls nicely under the ball of your index finger. However, heart-rate sensors work best when they're constantly monitoring your pulse during periods of exercise or day-to-day activities. With the S5 you have to make a conscious decision to measure your pulse, which makes it less useful.

Camera

It's the improvements to the phone's camera that prove the most compelling. Samsung has upped the resolution to 16 megapixels, added DSLR-style phase-detect autofocus, the ability to shoot video at up to a 4K resolution, and is now using a new 1/2.6in sensor. The latter isn't only larger than the HTC One (M8)'s 1/3in offering, but also boasts new "ISOCELL" technology aimed at reducing image noise.

The result of these changes is top performance and superlative image quality all round. The autofocus system, true to Samsung's claims, focuses from near to far subjects in around 0.3 seconds – but that isn't the full story. It can take as long as a second to analyse the scene before that focusing takes place.

Still, when it does lock on, we found focus to be extremely accurate. The benefits of the new autofocus system are even more noticeable when it comes to video, where focus transitions are quick and sure-footed.
In terms of general quality, we found low-light shots to be cleaner than any other smartphone camera we've tested – apart from the superlative Nokia Lumia 1020, that is. Detail levels in good light are spectacular, and the HDR setting works effectively to balance out images shot in extremes of light and shade, in both stills and (remarkably) video.

Display

Elsewhere, the changes are less dramatic but well worth having. The 5.1in Super AMOLED display, for instance, boasts the same 1,920 x 1,080 pixel count of the S4 but is dramatically improved.
Measured with our colorimeter, maximum brightness is up from the 221cd/m[sup]2[/sup] of the S4 to a much more acceptable 364cd/m[sup]2[/sup], while its perfect black levels deliver picture quality of unrivalled depth. The only area where the best IPS screens win out is outside in fierce sunlight: the brighter iPhone 5S and HTC One (M8) displays are easier to read in the sun's glare.
As always with Samsung's AMOLED displays, colours are a little oversaturated, and the colour temperature is on the cool side, but these are small gripes. Taken as a whole, the display is as good as you'll find on any smartphone.

Performance and battery life

The same can be said for performance, which as you'd expect from a Samsung flagship is beyond reproach. The Samsung Galaxy S5 sports a quad-core, 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 with an Adreno 330, 2GB of RAM and 16/32GB of storage. It's similar to the HTC One (M8)'s offering here, but clocked 0.3GHz faster.
Benchmark scores were a match for the fastest phones we've tested. Geekbench 3 single and multicore test results of 957 and 2,960 are very close to the HTC One (M8)'s scores of 984 and 2,849. The same goes for the results of the GFXBench T-Rex HD gaming test, which returned a frame rate of 27.9; the HTC One (M8) gained a negligible advantage of 1.1fps.
The S5's most impressive result was in the single-threaded SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, where it edged in front of even the iPhone 5s with a time of 391ms.
In practice, all this means that the S5 is quick enough to deal with any conceivable task. Hefty web pages load in a trice and panning and zooming around them is never less than buttery smooth; plus, the latest 3D mobile games run smoothly, with no choppiness or juddering.

Battery life, as we found with the HTC One (M8), is excellent. We regularly found that even while testing out the camera, shooting videos, downloading apps and updates over Wi-Fi and light web browsing over 3G, the S5 comfortably lasted a day, with plenty of capacity left over.
In our more rigorous testing, too, the Galaxy S5 delivered impressive figures: it used 5.2% per hour of its battery capacity while playing back a 720p video file on the Samsung video player app, and 4.9% of its capacity while streaming a 128K audio file over 3G from our SoundCloud account. These figures are better than the HTC One (M8)'s, albeit not by a huge margin.

It's possible to stretch battery life even further by switching the phone into its Ultra Power saving mode. Like the HTC One (M8)'s Extreme Power Saving Mode, this shuts off mobile data, restricts you to a select number of apps and switches the screen to a more power-efficient greyscale colour scheme. Unlike the HTC, though, the list of apps you can use is customisable.
Alas, we can't report an accurate figure for the gaming section of the GFXBench, since the S5 drops the frame rate in this test, which gives an artificially positive total runtime of 264 minutes, 86% longer than the HTC One (M8)'s 142 minutes. We'd expect the S5 to be a little better than the M8 due to its larger 2,800mAh battery, but not by this much.

Notwithstanding this, we'd expect, given the performance results and similar internal hardware, that real-world gaming will drain the battery at a similar rate to the HTC One (M8), which is to say fast but not as fast as an iPhone 5s: its GFXBench runtime figure was a paltry 112 minutes.

Software

The software (Android 4.4 KitKat with Samsung's TouchWiz overlay) is the one area where the S5's star dims a little, but there are still some interesting and worthy changes.
In the interesting category are My Magazine and Download Booster. Like HTC's BlinkFeed, the former gives a picture-heavy feed of news items and social network, accessible via a swipe from the left of the main homescreen. We found we ignored it most of the time.
The Download Booster allows you to gang together the phone's Wi-Fi and 4G connections to deliver ultra-fast speeds for downloads of more than 30MB in size.
In our tests, using the PC Pro ADSL connection and a Three 4G SIM, Download Booster worked perfectly. How much it will boost your download speed will depend on the speed of each link; we saw a doubling of throughput on average. Whether it's a practical feature for the masses is a matter for debate, since many 4G users will be on a capped contract and will want to save data by switching off 4G whenever possible.

In the more worthy category, we have improvements to the preloaded S Health app, which now encompasses the ability to measure your heart rate using the sensor on the S5 (or any of the accompanying smart watches - the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo or the Gear Fit).
Samsung has also significantly cleaned up TouchWiz's unnecessarily complicated settings menu. Previously a mess of tabs and long, scrolling menus, now we have one, long vertically scrolling menu, divided into sections, which is much easier to navigate. The addition of a search field to the top of the settings menu is a godsend.

Verdict

Aside from a couple of tiny grumbles, then, there's an awful lot to like about the Samsung Galaxy S5.
It's a much bigger upgrade than the S4 was last year, and that makes it the best smartphone on the market right now (even if Google's Nexus 5 retains its position atop our A List due to its optimum combination of price and all-round ability).
The Galaxy S5 may not have the looks of the HTC One (M8), but it's tougher, has a far better camera, boasts more useful features, and provides greater flexibility courtesy of that user-replaceable battery.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact

Sony's Xperia Z1 Compact was one of our favourite phones of early 2014, squeezing big performance into a lightweight, water-resistant chassis, and it's aiming to continue in the same vein with the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact.
See also: The 15 best smartphones of 2014

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact: design

It's endearingly petite compared to modern flagship phones, with a screen that measures 4.6in across the diagonal helping to make for a very pocketable handset. Design-wise it's reasonably attractive, too, with curved edges clad in translucent plastic, a glossy flat back and "shatterproof glass" up front. The Z3's sturdy-feeling body isn't the slimmest out there – it measures a chunky 8.7mm thick – but despite a screen that's only the tiniest bit smaller than Apple's iPhone 6, the Z3 feels markedly more compact (it's actually 11mm shorter), and it's just as light, weighing 129g. Visit: the best Android phones of 2014 too.

We weren't particularly keen on the slightly unpleasant green colour of our review unit, but the good news is that you can also buy it in the much more palatable shades of red, black and white. Its design is more than just distinctive – it's also seriously tough. A pair of flaps on the left edge seals the ports, giving the Z3 its IP68 water- and dust-resistant status, and as with other high-end Xperia devices, you can dunk the Z3 Compact in up to a metre of water for 30 minutes. This is a phone that can easily shrug off rain showers, sweat and accidental tea spillages.
Beneath those flaps, there's a decent level of connectivity, too: the upper flap covers the phone's micro-USB port and microSD slot, which allows up to 128GB of extra storage to be added; the other conceals the handset's nano-SIM tray. In general it's an excellent, no-nonsense design: light, robust, pocketable and usable one-handed. There's even a dedicated camera button, making it simple to fire off quick snaps.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact review: features and specifications

The Z3 Compact matches its sensible design with top-of-the-line features and components. Where most smaller smartphones sacrifice performance, the Z3 Compact makes no such compromise, matching its bigger brother, the 5.2in Xperia Z3, blow for blow.
The processor is a quad-core 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, as fast as you'll find in any Android phone currently, which is coupled with 2GB of RAM, an Adreno 330 CPU and 16GB of storage.

The rear camera's 1/2.3in sensor captures 20.7-megapixel stills and 4K video at 30fps (1080p is shot at 60fps), and there's a 1/8th speed slow-motion mode to match the iPhone 6.
Elsewhere, the Z3 Compact has most other bases covered as well. There's Cat4 4G support for downloads of up to 150Mbits/sec, Bluetooth 4, NFC and dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Even the battery is big: Sony has squeezed in a 2,600mAh unit – a remarkable feat in a phone so small.
A screen resolution of 720 x 1,280 isn't a match for larger rivals, which tend to have Full HD displays or higher. Due to its smaller size, though, the pixel density is perfectly respectable. Its 319ppi delivers onscreen images that look just as sharp as they do on the iPhone 6 (327ppi).
There are some areas in which the Z3 Compact lags behind the very best, but fortunately these aren't hugely critical. It has no infrared transmitter, no heart-rate monitor, no fingerprint reader, and the camera doesn't have phase-detect autofocus, using only the slower contrast-detect method.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact review: performance and camera

The upshot of squeezing such powerful hardware into a compact, 720p phone is that it performs like a rocket. In the most demanding of the benchmarks we run on phones – the GFXBench T-Rex HD gaming test – the Z3 Compact delivered a frame rate of 41.2fps, slightly faster than the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. Only the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are significantly quicker.

Its browser results were less than stellar, with 825ms in SunSpider and 913 in Peacekeeper, but scores of 927 and 2,602 in the single- and multi-core parts of the CPU-focused Geekbench 3 test were superb, and equal to most Android challengers. Once again, though, both iPhones beat it.
In real-world use, the phone felt perfectly slick in most departments. The only slight problem we encountered was a slight pause in the appearance of the camera app and some of the more graphics-heavy apps.
The screen performs even better. It's blazingly bright at its maximum setting: we measured it at 550cd/m2, which means it's readable on even the brightest days. Even with Sony's "X-Reality" and "Super-vivid" image enhancements turned off, contrast is a highly respectable 966:1, lending movies, games and photos plenty of solidity and depth. With good colour accuracy and the ability to cover 97.5% of the sRGB colour gamut, the Sony Z3 Compact's display is as good as any we've come across on a phone.
We have no complaints over call quality. Most calls we made came through loud and clear at both ends. We had no issues with dropped calls, and the speaker reaches loud enough volumes that you can listen to talk radio and YouTube videos without having to connect to an external speaker.
The camera is also fantastic. Slightly over-aggressive compression does smear details in good light, and the autofocus isn't the quickest – it hunts back and forth more than the cameras on the iPhone 6 or the Samsung Galaxy S5. However, for overall quality in low light (without the flash), it beats both, with a cleaner, more detailed image. Plus, it's fun using the various modes, in particular the aforementioned slow-motion, and quality in video is top-notch.

Perhaps more importantly, battery life is excellent. In our time with the phone, its 2,600mAh power pack reliably delivered more than 24 hours of mixed use. It also performed well in our tests, depleting at a rate of 7.5% per hour while playing 720p video (in flight mode with the screen set to a brightness of 120cd/m2), and at a rate of 3.3% per hour while streaming audio over a 3G connection with the screen switched off.
If we're being picky, the Z3 Compact does fall slightly behind the very best here: its predecessor, the Z1 Compact, was more frugal – using 5.4% and 2.7% per hour in the video and streaming tests – as were the HTC One M8 (6.5% and 3.8%) and the iPhone 6 (7.5% and 1.7%). There isn't a huge amount in it, though, and when battery life is really low, the Z3 Compact's Stamina mode can help eke things out for a little longer.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact review: software

Finally, as with its other Android devices, Sony installs its own skin on top of Android 4.4.4 (KitKat), and there's much to like. The most notable difference from plain Android is the way that the app drawer works: Sony adds the ability to reorder apps or have them displayed alphabetically, and uninstalling apps is different, too. It's a positive addition rather than something that gets in the way.
We also like the extra, customisable shortcut menu that Sony adds to the bottom of the multitasking view. Largely, though, we appreciate that Sony's customisations are unobtrusive and subtle. For the most part, the Z3 Compact behaves like a standard Android phone, and that's a very good thing.
As far as Android 5 Lollipop goes, Sony promises the Z3 Compact will receive it's update early in 2015, after the flagship Z3 gets its update.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact review: price and verdict

The Xperia Z3 Compact can't quite match the very best smartphones we've seen over the past year in terms of all-round performance, but then it doesn't need to. Why? First, if you want flagship performance and features in a smaller package, it's currently your only option other than the iPhone 6. Second, its £348 SIM-free price undercuts all of its larger-screened rivals by a huge margin.
We've been waiting almost a year for a smartphone to dethrone the Nexus 5 from the top of our A-List, and finally we have our man. The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact may be a little smaller, but it's more manageable, superior to the Nexus 5 in all other departments, and is only £50 more expensive. In short, no other smartphone offers the same level of performance and features at this price, an achievement that sees it, at long last, elbow Google's mainstay aside.

Samsung Galaxy S6

Samsung is no stranger to manufacturing smartphones jam-packed with the very latest in technology – it's a company that's always marching forwards. Only one thing has eluded the Korean giant to date, however, and that's the ability to design a phone that's as gorgeous as it is functional. The arrival of the long-awaited Galaxy S6 sees the company finally break free of those shackles; the Samsung Galaxy S6 is, unequivocally, the best smartphone you can buy anywhere, and for any price.

Samsung Galaxy S6: design

No two ways about it, the Samsung Galaxy S6 is a stunner, framed in cool-to-the-touch aluminium, and with a coloured Gorilla Glass 4 rear and front, it's a beautiful phone to behold. It's clad in Gorilla Glass 4 front and back, and the way it gleams and glistens in the light is quite entrancing. The S6 is available in "White Pearl", "Gold Platinum" and "Blue Topaz", but we think it looks best in "Black Sapphire", which you see pictured here.

As you'd expect from a modern smartphone, the S6 is extremely slim (6.8mm) and light (138g), and it feels surprisingly compact in the hand, especially considering there's a 5.1in display up front.
In our view, the S6 delivers the perfect compromise between screen size and one-handed comfort – in fact, it's slightly smaller overall than the Samsung Galaxy S5 – and it combines that with impressive build quality and attention to detail. Even the volume, power and home buttons feel like they've been upgraded: everything about this phone feels perfectly on point.

There are some downsides to the design, however. First, in order to produce such a gorgeous work of art, the removable rear panel, replaceable battery and microSD slot for storage expansion have been consigned to the dustbin.
Second, neither the S6 nor the S6 Edge has an IP rating, so they're not not water and dust resistant like last year's Samsung Galaxy S5 was.
And third, the glass rear of the phones picks up fingerprints like they're going out of fashion. It's easy to clean, but if you own one of these phones, you're going to be spending a lot of your time wiping it on your jeans or the hem of your T-shirt to keep it spotless.

Samsung Galaxy S6: display

Both the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the S6 Edge have a 5.1in Quad HD Super AMOLED display, with a resolution of 1,440 x 2,560 and a phenomenal pixel density of 576ppi, but while we're still not convinced this sort of resolution is necessary on a screen so small, there's absolutely no doubt that it delivers an incredibly sharp image.
Colour accuracy, brightness and contrast, however, are more important than sheer pixel count, and on this front, the S6 delivers a knockout blow. In manual brightness mode, the screen ramps up to only 347cd/m², which is what we'd expect of an AMOLED display; pop it in auto-brightness mode and it will soar to 560cd/m² to aid readability on bright, sunny days. That's an improvement on the Galaxy Note 4 and Note Edge, which reached just below 500cd/m² in the same circumstances.

Turn down the brightness slider to minimum and white tones on the screen will dim to 1.92cd/m². That's much lower than the 5.84cd/m² the iPhone 6 is capable of, and means the S6 won't blind you when you're using it in the dark. Contrast is perfect, which helps movies, TV programmes and photos really pop out of the screen.
What's most impressive about the S6's screen, though, is its outstanding colour reproduction. In Basic (sRGB) mode it reproduces 98.5% of the sRGB colour gamut. And it's highly colour-accurate, too, with an average Delta E of 1.47 and a maximum of 4.13. In AMOLED Photo mode (equivalent to a professional monitor's Adobe RGB mode), it covers 98.7% of the colour gamut, and gained average colour-accuracy scores of 1.57 and a maximum of 4.29.
These are the sorts of scores we're more used to seeing on professional monitors than a smartphone – it's a truly stunning display.

Samsung Galaxy S6: specs and performance

In terms of the performance-critical elements, Samsung is really pushing the boat out. Both the S6 and the S6 Edge employ its octa-core Exynos 7420 SoC, which comprises twin quad-core CPUs (one running at a frequency of 2.1GHz and one at 1.5GHz) and a Mali-T760 GPU. There's 3GB of RAM to accompany this, and storage runs to 32GB, 64Gb or 128GB on the S6 and 64GB or 128GB on the S6 Edge.
It's a lineup that makes for a very snappy-feeling phone. Nothing we threw at it caused it to slow down significantly, from hefty web pages to browsing Google Maps - everything feels supremely responsive, and even under load it doesn't get too warm.
And it outperforms most of its rivals in the benchmarks, too. Single- and multi-core results in Geekbench 3 of 1,485 and 5,282 are the best we've seen, falling behind the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus only a touch in the single-core test and trouncing them in the multi-core test.
It completed the SunSpider benchmark in an equally quick 355ms, again matching the iPhones, and it's only in the GFXBench T-Rex HD (onscreen) gaming benchmark that it lags behind Apple's flagships with an average framerate of 38fps. That's mainly due to the higher resolution display, but it's still very impressive.
The Samsung Galaxy S6 is clearly a fast phone, but the Exynos 7420 is about more than sheer speed. Just like Intel's new Broadwell generation of CPUs, it's a 14nm part, which should mean greater efficiency and better battery life. And with Samsung reducing the size of the battery by 200mAh to 2,600mAh, it needs to deliver.
In testing it did just that. Playing a 720p video in flight mode with the screen set to a brightness of 120cd/m², we saw capacity fall at a rate of 6% a figure bested only by the iPhone 6 Plus. With the screen off, the S6 used up its battery capacity at 2.8% - less impressive, but that still places it among the most frugal smartphones we've tested.
As with most high-end smartphones, the S6 struggles to keep up this performance when playing games, with capacity diving at a much faster rate. After running the GFXBench battery test, which loops a 3D scene at half brightness for around half an hour, then extrapolates to provide a total projected runtime, the S6 hit 134 minutes - not great, this result is fairly typical of most high-powered smartphones we see.
Even then, though, we found that on a normal day, using the phone intensively on our morning and evening commute and more lightly during the day, the S6 would normally have capacity to spare at bedtime.

As if to compensate for the lack of microSD expansion, the S6 also comes with a "new type of flash storage". According to Samsung's marketing materials, this is a fusion of the eMMC used in smartphones and tablets and the SSDs deployed in laptops.
Dubbed UFS (Universal Flash Storage) 2.0, the new storage technology employs a serial interface instead of the 8-bit parallel interface used by the eMMC storage typically used in rival smartphones, and this boosts performance dramatically. According to Samsung, UFS 2.0 can carry out 19,000 IOPS (input/ouput operations per second) for random reads, which is "2.7 times faster" than eMMC 5.
It's certainly very quick. Testing with the Androbench app, we saw sequential read and write speeds of 319MB/sec and 142MB/sec and 4K read and write speeds of 71MB/sec and 19MB/sec - very impressive, and a lot faster than the HTC One M9's performance in these tests.
Other specifications are a touch more humdrum, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing, with 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Cat6 4G, NFC and Bluetooth 4 all present and correct. At close range, a large file copied to the S6's internal storage at around 12MB/sec, which is about the same speed as we saw with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
The phone also retains most of the core features of the Galaxy S5, with a barometer, and heart rate monitor on the rear of the device, plus wireless charging and ANT+ compatibility. What's new is support for both the WPC (Qi) and PMA wireless charging standards.
And Samsung has even found time to upgrade the fingerprint sensor. You no longer need to swipe your finger over the button, which we've found to be quite awkward with previous Galaxy S handsets. Instead, it's now possible to simply rest a digit on the sensor, just as with Apple's iPhone 6, 6 Plus, iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3.

Samsung Galaxy S6: camera, audio and call quality

The S6's camera isn't a radical upgrade. It has the same 16-megapixel resolution as the S5 and retains that super-quick phase-detect autofocus, but this year adds a wider aperture and optical image stabilisation.
These sound like small changes, but in practice they make a dramatic difference to the S6's photo- and video-capture capabilities. In all but the darkest of environments, the S6 is capable of capturing stunning images and smooth, stable video. Noise is still visible when capturing murky objects in low light, but even then you'll get usable results in most circumstances.

It isn't vastly superior to the iPhone 6's camera, but it's as quick and a better all-rounder in tricky light; we particularly love the live HDR feature, which displays on the screen, in real-time, what your processed photo will eventually look like. And it has a deft touch, balancing areas of bright and dark in a scene well without making the resulting photograph look unnatural.
The camera also boasts some new features on the software front. There's a new quick-launch feature, which allows you to double-click the home button to launch the camera app – in 0.7 seconds says Samsung. The camera software has been simplified, making it easier to access all the various settings. Samsung has made snapping selfies easier, too: you can now tap the heart-rate sensor on the rear to capture a self-portrait.
The front-facing camera provides 5-megapixel images and, with an aperture of f/1.9, selfies look impressively sharp even in poor light.

Impressively, video capture now benefits from object-tracking autofocus, a feature normally associated with dedicated camcorders. This worked pretty well in testing, but there's a catch: you can't use both object tracking and optical image stabilisation simultaneously; it's either or.
Audio is almost as impressive, both in-call and from the single speaker on the phone's bottom edge. The earpiece speaker goes superbly loud and doesn't distort at maximum volume, and speaker output is very good, matching the HTC One M9 for volume, if not body. The microphone is decent, too, picking up vocals at close and long range with admirable clarity.

Samsung Galaxy S6: Android Lollipop and TouchWiz features

As with any high-end smartphone worth its salt, the Samsung Galaxy S6 runs with Android 5 Lollipop on board, and as usual it's heavily modified, by courtesy of Samsung’s TouchWiz launcher software.
This year, however, we see a significant change in direction by Samsung, with the company cutting out the clutter and slimming down what had become a hugely bloated and complex mobile UI. We're still not too keen on the Briefing newsfeed that appears by default to the left of the main homescreen, but it's gratifying to see that Samsung no longer litters the rest of Android's homescreens with a hotchpotch of large, ugly widgets.

Aside from the usual dock at the bottom of the main homescreen, all you get with the S6 is the clock and weather widget at the top, the Google search box below this, and space for up to eight standard app below and above the search box. There's no longer any need to spend your first half-hour with the phone deleting widgets and tidying up the homescreens.
Samsung has also added in the ability to wake the phone using a key phrase, just as you can with Google Now on the Nexus 6 and Motorola Moto X (2014). And as we've mentioned, the camera app is much, much tidier than before.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge: software features

There’s also a host of modifications targeted at the curved screens on the S6 Edge, which are a subtle evolution of those we've already tried out on the Note Edge. We haven't yet had the opportunity to test the S6 Edge for any significant length of time, but we do know what the key features are.
The ability to pull out a series of favourite contacts from the edge is a great idea. What's more, each of these contacts is associated with a different colour; when a call comes in, the edge lights up in that colour, so you instantly know who's trying to get hold of you, even if the phone is face down and in silent mode.
Just like the Note Edge, the S6 Edge displays a clock on its edge in standby if you give it a little tickle, a feature that's a boon if you need to check the time in the middle of the night and your phone is sitting on the bedside table.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge vs Samsung Galaxy S6

The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is even more eye-catching than the standard S6. It has the same coloured glass and metal frame, but the screen curves away at the sides, giving it a unique and very appealing look.

It's available in a slighlty different selection of colours to the S6: there's the same white, black and gold, but instead of "Blue Topaz" it comes in "Green Emerald".
Physically, the S6 Edge is ever-so-slightly fatter than the S6 at 7mm – not that we noticed any difference when we held the two side by side. It’s also fractionally shorter and narrower, but we’re talking tiny differences here. The S6 Edge is 6g lighter than the standard S6.

And there's a difference in storage configurations and price as well: the S6 Edge is also available only in 64GB and 128GB variants, and the 64GB model is significantly more expensive than the 32GB S6, with the cheapest model costing an eye-watering £760.
In terms of the rest of the specifications, the only major change is that the S6 Edge has a larger battery, at 2,600mAh compared with the S6's 2,550mAh battery. Everything else – the size and resolution of the screen, the cameras, processor, RAM and storage options – is identical.

Samsung Galaxy S6 review: verdict

While the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge catches the eye with its unusual looks, though, we suspect it's the standard, slightly more affordable S6 that most consumers will opt for. And why not? The design is simply superb. The build is excellent. It's fast, slick, and its camera captures great pictures and superlative video.
You could criticise it for lacking a microSD slot and removable battery, and we're sure those omissions will put plenty of people off. But in every other respect, the Samsung Galaxy S6 is a superlative smartphone, and significantly better than the HTC One M9. If only the best will do, look no further. The Samsung Galaxy S6 is the best smartphone on the market.

The 17 best smartphones of 2015

1. Samsung Galaxy S6

Price when reviewed: 32GB, £600 inc VAT

Samsung finally kicked out plastic for its latest smartphone design and, aside from a couple of reservations, the result is a triumph. The S6 looks glorious with Gorilla Glass 4 at the front and rear and coloured metal beneath it to give it a glitzy, shimmering look. And Samsung has significantly beefed up the innards without impacting on battery life negatively.
The highlight, however, is the improved camera, which now boasts optical image stabilisation and a wide f/1.9 aperture for stunning image capture in all conditions.
The S6 edge is just as good and arguably the more attractive device, but its unusual curved screen and the fact that there's no 32GB option bumps the price of an already expensive phone up to an eye-watering £760. Buy the S6: you won't regret it.
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2. LG G4

Price when reviewed: £530 inc VAT (for the plastic-backed edition)

Last year's LG G3 was a top smartphone - and still is (see below) - but the LG G4 is a different beast entirely: it has a camera to match the Samsung Galaxy S6, fast internals and a fantastic 5.5in quad HD display.
It isn't as slim, sleek or outright delicious as the Samsung Galaxy S6, but the leather backed options are surprisingly attractive, and if you place practicalities before aesthetics, the LG G4 beats the S6 hands down.
Unlike Samsung's leading light, the G4 boasts a removable, 3,000mAh battery so you can carry a spare for emergencies or replace a failing battery a year or two down the track; and it also has a microSD slot, so you're not stuck with the 32GB stock storage allocation. Plus, it's a touch cheaper than the S6.
Currently, we have the LG G4 in second place in our smartphone list, because it isn't quite as quick as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and battery life isn't as good either, but it's a very, very close run thing.
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3. Sony Xperia Z3 Compact

Price when reviewed: £348 inc VAT

Sony’s pint-sized smartphone packs in a host of premium features without the high-end price, including fast performance and waterproofing. It's the battery life that really sets this handset apart from the crowd, however, regularly delivering one to two days of use per charge.
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4. Samsung Galaxy S5

Price on 30/03/15: £330 inc VAT

There's an awful lot to like about the Samsung Galaxy S5: it's good-looking, tough, big, feature rich and we love the user-replaceable battery and memory expansion. It's a great smartphone in every way, and now that the S6 is here, the price is more reasonable. If you're not precious about the way your phone looks, the Samsung Galaxy S5 is a great buy.
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5. iPhone 6

Price when reviewed: £539 inc VAT

It's a brave new world for Apple's larger iPhone, and it's much the better for it. Super-fast, beautiful to look at and lovely to use. It's the dictionary definition of a flagship handset.
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6. Motorola Moto G

Price when reviewed: £145 inc VAT

A high-quality budget Android handset with an excellent screen and decent battery life. There's now a 4G version as well, for those hankering after faster mobile data.
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7. HTC One M9

Price when reviewed: £580 inc VAT

HTC took the One M8's design and refined it for 2015, creating a truly stunning smartphone. The internals have been upgraded as well: Qualcomm's octa-core Snapdragon 810 SoC; the camera goes from the M8's 4-megapixel snapper to 20 megapixels; and HTC has added a host of features to its Sense Android launcher software.
It's a beautifully crafted and highly competent smartphone, just like last year's HTC One M8. But it's only a small improvement on the M8.
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8. LG G3

Price when reviewed: £459 inc VAT

LG rustles up a classy, top-rung smartphone, with a ridiculously high-resolution screen and super-fast camera; but that display takes its toll on battery life.
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9. Samsung Galaxy Note 4

Price when reviewed: £599 inc VAT

Samsung has produced the finest phablet yet. In addition to a new Quad HD display and a smart new look, Samsung has bumped up the speed, battery life, camera quality and range of features – big-screened phones don't get any better than this.
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10. Samsung Galaxy Note Edge

Price when reviewed: £609 inc VAT

With most of the same features as the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and a funky curved-edge display, it’s hard to criticise the Edge. However, that curved display, intriguing as it is, adds significantly to the cost – and that's enough to cement the Note 4 as our large-screen smartphone of choice.
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11. Nexus 6

Price when reviewed: £499 inc VAT

The Nexus 6 has taken us by surprise in the short time we’ve had it. Once you sidle past the unavoidable fact of its gargantuan size, there’s an awful lot it does right. Battery life is good, the camera is excellent, and the build and design quality are second to none. And although its rivals hold an edge over it in many areas, the differences aren’t huge.
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12. iPhone 6 Plus

Price when reviewed: £619 inc VAT

Apple’s 5.5in giant isn’t for everyone, but for some it may prove the perfect mid-point between an iPad and iPhone. And contrary to initial reports, our long-term review sample hasn't suffered from any undue bending - it's remained rock-solid in the face of all the abuse we've dished out.
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13. Samsung Galaxy Alpha

Price: £280 inc VAT

The Galaxy Alpha is among Samsung's best-looking smartphones, and now that the Galaxy S6 is here the price has sunk to a tempting £280 - almost half its original price. If you want a feature-packed smartphone at a reasonable price, it's worth a look.
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14. Motorola Moto X

Price when reviewed: £419 inc VAT

Motorola’s second-generation Moto X hits most of the right notes, coupling beautiful design with a hatful of innovative and useful features.
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15. Nokia Lumia 930

Price when reviewed: £419 inc VAT

The Lumia 930 is a knock-out from the first moment you pick it up. It's a Windows Phone device, so it can't compete on apps, but the design of Nokia's flagship is sumptuous and right up there with the best around.
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16. Sony Xperia Z3

Price when reviewed: £477 inc VAT

The successor to the Z2 isn't that much different. It's a touch slimmer and lighter than the Z2, the screen is brighter, and the processor is clocked a fraction higher, but almost everything else is the same. It's a very good Android device, and if you can still find a Z2 for sale it will be much cheaper and almost as good.
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17. Motorola Moto E

Price when reviewed: £109 inc VAT

Makes plenty of compromises to keep costs down, but performs where it counts; the Moto E is another winner from Motorola at a highly tempting price. This is the best £100 handset by a country mile, and now it includes 4G.




NOTE: THIS INFORMATION WAS GOTTEN FROM : http://www.pcpro.co.uk