The Sony Xperia Z2 was a flagship smartphone released by Sony Mobile in April 2014. It was part of Sony’s Xperia Z series and was designed to be a high-end device with a focus on water and dust resistance, camera capabilities, and premium design which set it aside from competing handsets of its time. 

Competing smartphones of its time was the Samsung Galaxy S5. The HTC One M8 compared favourably but had perceived better audio quality owing to its front facing speakers.The LG G3 also beat it in the display department, offering a Quad HD display. However the Xperia offered more memory, a better camera and generally a larger display.

The Xperia Z2’s design – it’s unmistakably Sony. Glass on the front and back, sandwiched with a solid metal frame. The overall aesthetic screams premium, no doubt. But be ready to deal with some smudges and fingerprints, because this thing attracts them like a moth to a flame. One standout feature was the water and dust resistance, with the handset offering cover flaps for both the charging and card slots which set it apart from other handsets, but its glass back frame was a source of weakness, with owners reporting broken or cracked backs from minor drops. It was imperative to use a third party case, which detracted from the appearance of the phone.

The Xperia’s main menu, very close to the stock Android interface few a few Sony enhancements. Also note the Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet and what I assume is the main character from Medieval, two of Sony’s game franchises. 

Still theres a distinct lack of Kratos from God Of War.

Swiping right takes you to another home screen, here you can see the clock, Google search box (which is a widget that can be changed to any search engine that you like) and shortcuts to Google’s services.

The lock screen, which provides shortcuts to the camera when you swipe up in that direction. A common design you will see are waves, which were similar to what was seen on the PS3 XMB and the PS4 home menu, I guess its Sony’s thing

Included Apps

Xperia Lounge: It was designed to offer Xperia users a variety of exclusive content, offers, and experiences that were tailored to their devices and interests. The app aimed to provide a unique and personalised experience for Xperia smartphone owners, offering access to a range of content and perks that were not available to users of other devices. Mainly this was ringtones, themes and wallpapers, though some offers were promoted, mainly for obscure services/products that no one would ever use like vegan chocolate.

PlayStation: Should need no introduction, this was Sony’s app to manage and view your PlayStation trophies and friends. You could also access the PSN store.

Music: Sony’s music player, though I’m a little disappointed with the lack of Walkman branding, considering at one point Sony had Walkman phones. 

Music can be sorted by Artist, Album, Genres or the entire list of songs can be displayed. If album art is saved it will be displayed also. Podcasts also have their own category.

Music can also be streamed directly from Google Drive.

Album: Photo viewer, photos captured with the camera will appear here.

Camera: Both still images and videos can be captured, and Sony have offered additional customizable settings to fine-tune the image before it’s captured. Sony also offers additional apps for specific effects like panorama, timeshift video and 4K capture. Since these are separate apps you will need to go through the permissions malarky the first time you launch these apps.

The Xperia Z2 has a dedicated analog camera button that helps control the focus when capturing an image, similar to the two-stage camera button that was common on Windows Phones.

Support: A help center where users could get more information on how how to use the phone, or how to perform specific features. You can also find out detailed information of the handset itself such as memory usage, or perform hardware tests if you are experiencing issues with the handset.

You can also set an automated backup, which can use the SD card, USB storage or an online service

The STAMINA feature lets you prolong battery life by reducing power usage when the battery hits a certain threshold, very similar to the battery saver feature of Windows Phone. There is also an ultra STAMINA feature, which reduces the phone to a feature phone, ideal if you’re going on a camping trip for the weekend and need to conserve battery power. Though why not just bring a power bank?

Email: A basic email client to connect to email services that didn’t offer their own mobile app. As long as POP3/IMAP is supported, the amp and connect and synchronize with your provider. Most users would typically use either Outlook/Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

Microsoft Exchange was also supported.

Weather: Sony’s stock weather app, powered by Accuweather. Surprisingly this still works well and is able to bring up weather information from my local area.

Calendar: Your standard calander app

Newsfrom Socialife: Sony’s news app. The app aimed to curate news articles, blog posts, and other online content based on users’ interests, allowing them to stay informed about topics they cared about. The app would aggregate news articles, blog posts, and other content from various sources across the internet and present them in a personalized news feed. The content displayed would be based on the user’s selected interests and preferences.

Users could choose their favorite topics, categories, and sources to tailor their news feed to their interests. This allowed users to receive updates about subjects that mattered to them. The app also supported offline reading so that articles could be read in the event they no longer had access to date, ideal if you travel the underground subway/railway.

As of 2023 the app is now dead but was replaced by News Suite, which is still a thing on modern Xperia smartphones, at least on my Xperia 1 IV.

Calculator: Your standard calculator, appears to license some code from SGI (Silicon Graphics) which was a major workstation vendor.

Clock: Standard clock application that is similar to other apps of this type. Includes a stopwatch, alarm clock, clock that supports multiple time zones and a timer.

Lifelog: This was designed to help users track and record various aspects of their daily activities and experiences, creating a digital “lifelog” of their interactions, movements, and habits. The app aimed to provide users with insights into their daily routines and behaviors, with a focus on health, fitness & entertainment. The main features of this app were Activity Tracking, The app used sensors like the phone’s accelerometer and GPS to track physical activities, such as walking, running, and cycling. It could also monitor your movements throughout the day. Additional features were sleep tracking, health insights, goals and social integration. In many ways it was similar to the FitBit app.

Sketch: Sony’s own version of MSPaint, allows you to freehand draw using either the brush, pencil or sticker tools. Shaps can also be added and there’s various image manipulation tools like smudging

The background can also be changed to give the appearance of writing or graph paper, which can also be customized.

There is also an option to place stickers onto your drawing, of which Panda themed stickers are included by default. At one point you could download additional sticks from Sony online, but has since been discontinued.

TrackID: Sony’s own version of Shazam, which has access to the Gracenote database. The app was designed to quickly identify the title, artist, and album of a song playing in the background, which was particularly useful for discovering new music or identifying tracks you encountered in various settings.

AVG protection: Virus protection was a thing on Android, and Xperia’s were commonly bundled with AVG which offered basic protection. With the option to upgrade to a paid version which offered better support.

Well at least it’s not McAfee or Norton.

PS Video: A video-on-demand store where you could purchase movies and TV series boxsets to own, which could then be played on the PS3 or PS4, or if you had a smart Bravia TV. Not to be confused with PlayStation Vue, which was an OTT streaming service limited to the US.

File Commander: A third-party file manager application funded with the phone, and one of the few apps that has adverts. Files can be browsed on both the internal storage, and the SD card if one is inserted. This appears to be a limited trial that requires a license to be unlocked.

Smart Connect: Lets you setup and enable certain events to trigger when you connect an accessory, like a headset or charger. For headsets you can set the phone to automatically open the music app and set it to only happen within set time period.
You can also use this for timed profiles, where you can set the phone to go on silent mode between a set time period.

Kobo eBooks: A bookstore that competes with Amazon’s Kindle, preloaded partly as Sony had discontinued their own bookstore for their eReader series.

Navigation: A rebranded Garmin client, servers as an alternative to Google Maps and makes use of the assisted GPS feature of the phone.

TV SideView: TV SideView was designed to serve as a companion app for Sony’s BRAVIA line of smart televisions. It allowed users to control and interact with their Sony smart TVs using their Xperia smartphones. It can be used as a remote control (requires the TV to be connected to the same network) a program guide powered by Gracenote, and content recommendations for upcoming TV programs. This still works with modern BRAVIA Android TV’s and will pull the current channel list along with TV listings.

Messages: Supports SMS and MMS, with custom stickers.

Notification & Launcher

Sony’s launcher is very similar to what you would find on a stock Android handset, complete with multiple home screens. The home screens can be customized with custom icons or widgets.

Xperia Keyboard, Sony would later switch to the Switfkey keyboard, additional skins can be selected to customize the keyboard 

One-handed mode is a feature to make the phone easier to use.

Sony have their own set of emoji’s that can be used over the stock Android ones

The task switcher, the bar along the bottom appears to be some soft of quick launch bar. The default options are Internet Browser, Timer, Calculator and Screen capture (Which allows you to capture the window itself, like the Windows snipping tool)

Settings

The settings menu is divided into different sections for easier navigation:

Wireless & Networks: Connect to a WiFI network, Bluetooth. In the Device Connections menu, you can ‘Throw’ media onto an external display using either screen mirroring or DLNA, if the TV supports either of these. The Throw feature integrates with Sony’s media apps, giving a unified experience. There are separate options for casting and screen mirroring which are managed by Android.

This might be because screen mirroring was included as standard in later Android versions/updates, but was not at the phone’s release.

Alternatively you can set the phone to be a media server, and have your devices connect to it instead.

Another feature is the ability to pair a DualShock 4 controller, which is the standard PS4 controller. This is useful for playing games that support the Android controller API. This didn’t work on three of my controllers (CUH-ZCT2E) the first couple of attempts, but after closing and resetting the Bluetooth I eventually got it to pair, as it would attempt to pair but would then fail.

Once paired you can controller the phone via the controller and can navigate base menus.

The Device section gives you settings for personalization, such as themes, display, notifications & sound. Theme in particular can be downloaded and applied. to the phone and can change the colour scheme, icons and background wallpaper.

Lastly shutting down the Xperia Z2