Sony Announces the Xperia Z3v for Verizon
by Brandon Chester on October 9, 2014 2:49 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Sony
- Verizon
- Mobile
Consumers in the United States have typically been unable to purchase Sony smartphones if their carrier is Verizon. The carrier's lineup has been devoid of any Xperia offerings for quite some time. One exception was the Xperia Play which launched exclusively on Verizon in the United States 3 years ago. Since then we haven't seen much in the way of collaboration between the two companies beyond a few tablet launches. That ends today with the launch of the Sony Xperia Z3v on Verizon.
At its core, the Z3v is the same as the Xperia Z3 that Sony unveiled earlier this year at IFA. It's Sony's flagship smartphone, with a 5.2" 1920x1080 IPS display, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of NAND with 128GB MicroSDXC expansion, a 20.7MP camera, and Qualcomm's MSM8974AC with 4 Krait 400 cores at 2.5GHz.
There are a few changes with the Verizon exclusive Z3v. The design of the chassis has some alterations. The sides of the phone in particular are flatter than the international Z3, and because of this the Z3v looks more visually similar to the Xperia Z2 than the Z3. The phone also has a couple of improvements over the Z3. The first is the addition of Qi inductive charging, and the other is a small boost in battery capacity from 11.78Whr to 12.16Whr.
The Z3v will be launching on October 23 for $199 on a 2 year term. Users who are interested in more information can check out Verizon's sign up page for the new device.
Source: Sony via The Verge
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maevinj - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
I wish they would port Windows (Phone) onto one of these!tuxRoller - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
I don't think Sony wants to lose even more money:)craighamilton - Saturday, December 6, 2014 - link
The Xperia series is not very popular within consumer based rankings (just see http://www.topreport.org/phones/ for example...)invinciblegod - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
Didn’t the carriers hate qi because they were using the competing standard of pma wireless charging? Isn’t that why AT&T removes qi from all lumias?Duraz0rz - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
Verizon likes Qi, so you'll see that on the Verizon phones that offer wireless charging.AT&T is part of the PMA group, so it's in their best interest to promote it.
Impulses - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
I thought that was just AT&T, has any other carrier ever released a PMA version of a phone that originally featured Qi?techxx - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
I hope whoever's decision it was to not bring the Z3 Compact to the US goes to hell.Impulses - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Yeah, the Z3 compact is one if the few phones I've been interested in this year, at least those on GSM carriers could import it (I think?). I'm glad the upgrade bug hasn't hit me and I'm happy with my Nexus, cause lately Sprint seems to have fallen behind in device selection.Coup27 - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
flatter sides? lolwut?One of the criticisms of the Z2 was it's flat sides making it not particularly pleasant to hold. Every review of the Z3 I have read has praised the new rounded sides for making it much nicer to hold. Now they've done a special Verizon version with flat sides? Don't understand at all.
I wonder how Verizon customers who want a Z3 will react to this as well.
kyuu - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Nothing new. Verizon has a well-established history of forcing bad design choices on their variants. At least they didn't axe the Qi charging and halve the NAND like AT&T did to the Lumia 1520.