Sony Xperia Z vs Nexus 4

Can Sony's Xperia Z flagship offer something to draw us away from the competetively priced, premium-spec Nexus 4?

Form

The Nexus 4 is similar in a number of ways to its predecessor, the Galaxy Nexus, with the same overall shape and rounded corners. However, it also has a few notable differences – it’s shorter and wider and doesn’t have the Galaxy Nexus’ distinctive curvature along its length.

It also has a Gorilla Glass 2 back panel with a glittery texture underneath. Most design elements of the Nexus 4 make it quite an appealing phone to look at, although personally we don’t care for the glitter effect.

Sony’s Xperia Z is a much larger animal, sporting a 5-inch display. The corners are slightly curved, though compared to the Nexus 4 they look positively angular along with the rest of the Xperia Z’s design.

While the shape and proportions are nice and clean, like the Nexus 4 it doesn’t have the distinctive curvature of its predecessor, the Xperia T, which is a bit of a shame.

The detailing on the side panels looks pretty slick, however and the handset features Dragontrail reinforced glass on both the front and back. This new glass tech is supposedly six times stronger than Gorilla Glass 2.

Between these two we favour the Xperia Z.

Winner – Sony Xperia Z

Display

Google’s Nexus 4 features a 4.7-inch IPS+ LCD display with a 1280x768 pixel ‘True HD’ resolution at 318 pixels-per-inch (ppi).

Visuals are suitably crisp, bright and colourful.

The Xperia Z’s 5-inch display has a 1920x1080 pixel HD resolution at 443ppi which should ensure it delivers stunning picture quality, while white colours in particular are very bright and vivid.

Things are further enhanced by OptiContrast tech to improve contrast and produce truer blacks and Sony’s Mobile Bravia engine 2 for richer colours.

While the Nexus 4’s display is nothing to sneeze at it is easily outpaced by the Xperia Z’s larger, higher resolution screen.

Winner – Sony Xperia Z

Storage

The LG-made Nexus 4 comes in either 8GB or 16GB variants, neither of which has microSD capability.

While Sony’s Xperia Z has only one version with 16GB onboard it can be boosted by cards up to 32GB, making it the more flexible of the two devices.

Winner – Sony Xperia Z