Sony Xperia Z1 Compact on AT&T

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StoleMyOwnCar

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I made a (ill-fated) topic here earlier asking for a smartphone with good battery life for surfing and whatnot, considering my GS3 was on its way out. After doing specs/battery life research over at the GSM labs for a while and weighing the options in the topic, I decided that this thing was likely the closest to what I want:

http://store.sony.com/xperia-z1-compact-zid27-XZ1D5503//cat-27-catid-Android-Smartphone

However, AT&T doesn't even seem to carry it in their stores, and I have read that it doesn't support one of the LTE bands.

Does anyone have one of these and is using it on AT&T? Or know anything about how well it works on AT&T, or any issues I might have? Or perhaps a comparable alternative that is better supported?
 
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It's imperfect. LTE on band 4 is good, but you really want band 17 for AT&T's LTE to work seamlessly.

May want to hold off until the Z3 Compact (which hopefully doesn't take forever to reach the Sony store or a carrier).
 
And it was just announced, means it's probably gonna take forever to reach market. Sigh... ._.;

What's the next closest thing? Anything?
 
Galaxy mini and htc mini versions, but these are fairly sub par phones. If you can go WP for small devices they provide a great experience on the small + cheap front.
 
Trimlock said:
Galaxy mini and htc mini versions, but these are fairly sub par phones. If you can go WP for small devices they provide a great experience on the small + cheap front.
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Cheap I don't care about (either way is fine). Small, I'm interested in because I have no need of a phablet when I have my Surface Pro. So might as well get something small.

Windows Phones mainly have me apprehensive on one front:
Applications.

I can root my Android and do anything friggin imaginable with it and there are a ridiculous amount of choices for anything. Be it image viewer or player for mkv files. Last I checked, the Windows store seemed to be full of... well crickets, and plenty of fraud apps (especially when I was looking for VLC player when it was first released in there).

Browser (and call) battery life is pretty important, so that's why I was looking at the Z1 Compact.
http://www.gsmarena.com/battery-test.php3
5th one down despite its smaller size.

Also, GPS is really important. I don't need a huge screen to operate though. Heck from what I see my GS3 doesn't have a big screen compared to the current gen phones anyway...
 
then sorry... the Xperia Z(1/3) Compacts are the only flagship-specced phones(processor, camera, ram) in a small body. The rest of the compact Android (eg Sub 5") are inferior in some way, you'll have to choose what you can live without (processor, screen resolution, camera, etc). I'd go away from Samsung if you want more custom ROM choices

(you could probably find a grey-market import for the Z3 Compact when it comes out, probably around start of October. ebay/amazon marketplace/Expansys USA)

Moto G isn't that much bigger than the Z1c (about 0.1" bigger all around). Moto X is about the same size as the Z1c (bring an external battery pack just in case)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1uob36/z1_compact_size_comparison_to_popular_devices/
http://forum.xda-developers.com/sony-xperia-z1-compact/general/moto-x-vs-z1c-t2860413
 
To tell you the truth you won't see much of a difference in the "lower" specced devices other then screen quality and resolution. As long as the phone has 1gb of memory you will be fine and with 2gb you can load up quite a bit of applications.

Don't let "non-highend" spec's deter you from Android, the Moto G works really good.
 
Trimlock said:
To tell you the truth you won't see much of a difference in the "lower" specced devices other then screen quality and resolution. As long as the phone has 1gb of memory you will be fine and with 2gb you can load up quite a bit of applications.

Don't let "non-highend" spec's deter you from Android, the Moto G works really good.
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Well... Cameras usually suck though (it's junk in Moto G). Z3/1 Compact is exception.

I'll be buying Z3 Compact when it drops to 4XX €. Compact size yet really large battery. I don't think that there's anything comparable coming out.
 
Yea theres also the camera, I forgot to mention it since I don't really care about the camera quality all that much on a phone.
 
I would really love the Z1 Compact right now, but nooooo they just had to make it not compatible with one LTE band on AT&T. Grr... it's like staring at something that's pretty much almost perfectly what you want, but the part that isn't is a dealbreaker.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I would really love the Z1 Compact right now, but nooooo they just had to make it not compatible with one LTE band on AT&T. Grr... it's like staring at something that's pretty much almost perfectly what you want, but the part that isn't is a dealbreaker.
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Yea Sony is terrible at delivering products these days. They would have a pretty big following in the Android scene if they could actually get their hardware to our markets.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I was talking about the Z3 Compact, which will apparently be able to cover all of AT&T's LTE bands.

... How slow is GSM nowadays anyways?
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2G/3G? on AT&T, they didn't implement DC-HSDPA+(42mbps), so the most you can get theoretically is 21mbps...

practically, perhaps 3-5mbps? more importantly, 3G has higher latency: >300 vs >50)

you can see if AT&T owns band 2/4 spectrum in your area (no guarantee they are deploying LTE though). (AT&T uses band 2 for 3G as well) If they don't own any spectrum, then you won't get LTE definitely.

http://specmap.sequence-omega.net/

also, check your area on http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2459185,00.asp . AT&T is spectrum constrained(for LTE), need to refarm 2G (or get more spectrum)

I would just wait a month and do grey market import (probably up to $700 due to markup)
 
I was actually considering going a little larger and getting the LG G2, but then I realized it didn't have a blasted SD card slot! Otherwise I probably would have gotten it because AT&T has it in store and I can get it with my plan. Gosh, is Sony the only smartphone manufacturer that actually has their stuff together? I mean to me it looks like they're hitting the right things (for me at least) in terms of design.

I'm mainly using this chart:
http://www.gsmarena.com/battery-test.php3
And then sorting by web browsing life and then eliminating any phones that have less than about 2X hours of talk. At first it looked like there were a lot of options, but then I realized most of them were massive. I thought my S3 was big enough but it looks like sizes are slowly creeping upwards in general. I considered the S5 mini, but the reviews I read about it looked less than pleasing, and the talk time on their chart is horrendous. On the other hand, Sony has about 2-3 phones that would all fit the bill, just I'd prefer they have at least 2 gb ram and be able to support my 64GB card (otherwise it'd be 5 phones).

I might just have to get the S5 and make do with it. I don't think I wanna pay 700$ for a phone if I'm going to have to go with AT&T for my provider no matter what anyway, thanks to discounts. Sigh. My contract upgrade is coming up soon.
 
@OP, for the few Sony phones that have 2GB ram but no 64microSD support- do a search to see if it unofficially supports 64GB. Some phones do not have the exFAT license required for 64gb and above, but either you could put a fat32 formatted card or use custom ROM

mi7chy said:
Z3 is coming to Tmobile if you're considering the G2 since they're both 5.2". Hopefully it'll have all the bands for use on AT&T.

http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news/t-mobile-to-add-the-all-new-sony-xperia-z3-this-fall.htm

http://www.androidcentral.com/t-mobile-unboxes-sony-xperia-z3-so-we-dont-have
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not sure why you are recommending z3 when OP already doesn't want to wait for the z3c

Anyways, look at the Sony white paper site that I linked, for the z3.

It looks like the version T-Mobile has supports LTE 2,4,12. Theoretically, band 12 covers band 17 and should work, but there is no guarantee that the phone can connect to the att band 17 network. I don't remember if other z3 versions are 100% supported on att or are even available in usa. On mobile, can't dig it up easily...
 
It's not really just waiting, it's that I can't get this phone from an AT&T store (and never can, apparently). My contract renewal is coming up soon and since I get a discount on AT&T services there isn't any reason for me to consider other wireless companies, so buying something that the contract upgrade covers just makes sense.

So pretty much just need the next closest thing to the Xperia Z1 Compact or LG G2 that's available at AT&T. I'm thinking the S5 Mini but the issue is its horrendous call life comparatively. Is there some way to fix that with a kernel or ROM...? Other than that, it looks ok, though I wish it had a better camera. I just need something with good browsing and call life and a MicroSD slot, really. The smaller the better but I don't care anymore lol.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
It's not really just waiting, it's that I can't get this phone from an AT&T store (and never can, apparently). My contract renewal is coming up soon and since I get a discount on AT&T services there isn't any reason for me to consider other wireless companies, so buying something that the contract upgrade covers just makes sense.

So pretty much just need the next closest thing to the Xperia Z1 Compact or LG G2 that's available at AT&T. I'm thinking the S5 Mini but the issue is its horrendous call life comparatively. Is there some way to fix that with a kernel or ROM...? Other than that, it looks ok, though I wish it had a better camera. I just need something with good browsing and call life and a MicroSD slot, really. The smaller the better but I don't care anymore lol.
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if you want something specific and not the carrier choices, then you could get an iPhone 6 on contract, sell it (apple holds their value pretty well), then buy whatever phone you choose (that's the benefit of GSM, and the industry right now moving towards non-subsidized phones)

(eg, the korean LG G2 version has removable battery and microSD... but as I said, it's only available in korea, doesn't support AT&T LTE bands)
http://www.phonearena.com/news/LG-G2-for-Korea-has-microSD-card-slot-removable-battery_id46291
 
I'd prefer not to, reselling is a bit too much trouble with Ebay the way it is. Unless anyone has any specific ideas, I might just go with a S5 mini (or S5) or a G2 (even without the SD slot...) after work today because my GS3 is becoming very inconvenient to use. I think almost anything would be a big upgrade.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I'd prefer not to, reselling is a bit too much trouble with Ebay the way it is. Unless anyone has any specific ideas, I might just go with a S5 mini (or S5) or a G2 (even without the SD slot...) after work today because my GS3 is becoming very inconvenient to use. I think almost anything would be a big upgrade.
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craigslist (in person cash)/swappa. AT&T subsidy is roughly $450 if you look at the difference b/w retail price and 2-year contract pricing(w/ the initial downpayment)

as you said a few posts above... price/cheap isn't something you particularly care about....

It'll be silly getting an inferior phone for 2 years (G2 w/o microSD, or S5/mini with it's shortcomings)... well, up to you I guess
 
That's a good idea, and something I considered before going to bed yesterday, since it leaves me open to upgrading to something much better later, if it comes out. So, I ended up following through on it today.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Used-AT-T-L...1433701301?pt=Cell_Phones&hash=item1c46033bb5

I went ahead and purchased this. I don't know how much charge the used battery in it holds, but it can't be any worse than the GS3 I have. I also don't know when it'll be here considering this is shipping from California, but whatever. Yesterday I went to Best Buy to get this for free with an upgrade, but since I was coming in about 2 weeks before my upgrade, they said I'd have to pay an early upgrade fee of 200$. Going to the usual AT&T stores, they usually waived this fee if it was close enough. I guess Best Buy can't do that. I was a bit pissed but in hindsight it was probably a good thing. Like you said, no point doing an upgrade and getting locked into an older phone without an SD slot for 2 years.

Well, hope I'll be happy with this thing for a while.
 
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Well, kinda late since I already ordered the LG G2 off Ebay. I suppose I could resell it on Ebay pretty easily if the Sony set proves that tempting though. It seems that these sell pretty easy at the price and condition I got it for.

But I think the G2 will serve me well for a while anyway... right?

The Z3 compact is cheaper than I expected, though. I converted the price with VAT and it was only ~567 or so. I thought it was going to be at least 600. How strange. Still going to hold off though.
 
That's actually worse than I expected. While it's nice it gets a bit more browser time and plenty more video time (the latter of which I don't care about), it gets 9 hours less talk time than the LG G2, and in fact a good bit less than the Z1 Compact. I'm not sure how the heck they weight the scores on each of those categories, because some of the endurance ratings don't make sense to me. Let's put this in perspective. Compared to the Xperia Z1 compact, it went up by ~2-4 hours on browsing (not bad, not bad), and 5 hours on video playback (don't care)... but then went down 4 hours on talk time (=|), which now puts it with some of the crappier talk time phones. Like how the heck does their endurance rating work? The overall endurance rating--as has been noted in the comments section of that site quite often--of the LG G2 for instance also makes very little sense to me. It scores some very good and balanced individual ratings, yet the overall score is... 62? What? Just look at the way everything else in the 62 hour endurance range somehow scores the same yet has lower endurance scores across the board.

This bring me to the likely culprit: their arcane "real-life standby power consumption, which we also measure separately" footnote. It would be very, very nice if they listed it. Otherwise, it's like this black box factor that it seems like they could manipulate to skew endurance ratings based on sponsorship. I mean yeah their tests for the other categories might be valid, but all most people probably look at is that huge number in red. "Who cares about the details, give me the summary." (Most peoples' train of thought)

So either the G2's "real-life standby power consumption" is god awful or something's a bit fishy here. I also tended to notice, especially with my Galaxy S3, that standby battery consumption is very easily fixed with custom roms and kernels. It's the on-time that's much harder to improve.

TL;DR, the Xperia Z3 Compact looks worse than I expected, I'll probably be using this G2 for a good while. Assuming the blasted thing gets here sometime soon so that I can make sure it works properly and the battery is in good order. But I would honestly probably take the Z1 Compact over the Z3, if it had my LTE bandwidths. Ultimately I use my phone to talk to people. I'm not going to spend 15 hours browsing.
 
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I doubt you will beat the G2/Note3 on battery life tests very easily, they are kind of the kind of battery life without going to MAXX phone.
 
Okay the phone came in today. It did come in the condition that he said it was. Screen pretty much flawless. On the other hand it had a very distracting stuck pixel near the very center. So I filed for a refund because he didn't mention it. But then I used jscreenfix and it actually worked for once...

For these LCD phones if I "unstuck" a pixel, does it stay unstuck? I really need to know whether I should cancel this refund request or not, thanks.

Edit: nevermind, seems to have turned into a dead pixel, although it's strangely much smaller and less noticeable now. =_=;
 
A dead pixel is a "black" pixel which looks very tiny and can be completely unnoticeable most of the time. A "stuck" pixel is like a star in the night sky. Very noticeable, even if dim. The G2 is an awesome phone regardless. Largest screen with smallest phone body for a 5.2" screen. It's got a Snapdragon 800 and compared to the 801 model phones, it isn't really any weaker, just not as power efficient. Since the G2 has such a good battery life, even with the less power efficient processor, it's not a big deal.

G2 is incredibly easy root. Just hit XDA. Lots of ROM's available too. Biggest weakness is no SD slot. Non-removeable battery isn't that big of a deal since it lasts so long. Camera is good too, not best, but still very good, just a bit slow.
 
Well I know the difference between the two... Although I've never seen this happen before, I ran jscreenfix on my phone and it seemed to fix the stuck pixel but what actually happened was that it killed it. It's actually much less noticeable now, which makes me kind of worry because the seller offered me a refund on it if I return it.

I have a question for you folks: are these used phones all supposed to have dead/stuck pixels? I mean if this is the norm I guess I could keep it since it's at such a small pixel pitch. If it's not, I'll return it to him for a refund. I just hope no issues arise with him refunding me since it's much harder to see now.

I just haven't had any issues on Ebay until now so this is the first time I've had to return something, I'm a bit wary. Maybe my question belongs in another forum, I think there's something in another section about dealing with Ebay.
 
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