You can now officially buy the Sony Xperia Z5 and Xperia Z5 Compact from Amazon in the US. They were available unofficially from other third party sellers previously. However now they can be officially purchased with a warranty and all. The Sony Xperia Z5 will set you back $599.99 while it’s smaller sibling the Xperia Z5 Compact will cost you $499.99.
Both are very respectable phones and almost identical in specs. The Z5 has a 5.2 inch 1080P screen, Snapdragon 810 CPU, 3GB of ram, 32GB of storage, microSD card slot, 23MP rear facing camera, and 2900mAh battery. While the Z5 Compact has a 4.6 inch 720P screen, Snapdragon 810 CPU, 2GB of ram, 32GB of storage, microSD card slot, 23MP rear facing camera, and 2700mAh battery. As you can see the Z5 Compact only lacks slightly in size, memory, screen resolution, and battery size.
One thing that is missing from the US models though is the fingerprint scanner. Which is becoming more and more popular these days. Especially with support built into Marshmallow. Which I forgot to add neither of these have, they are currently running Lollipop 5.1. There has been no explanation given to why they dropped it from the US models. However you can always try picking up one of the International models. Which should run on most AT&T and T-Mobile bands, and include the fingerprint scanner. Strangely positioned on the side, requiring you to swipe your finger.
Sony doesn’t have much of a market in the US and dropping such an important feature surely won’t help that. Not to mention I think they are a little overpriced. One thing Sony does have going for them though, is making one of the only compact phones which still packs a punch. If you’re looking for a sub 5 inch phone these days with some power. You can’t really do better than the Sony Compact line. It loses a little on the screen resolution and memory, but everything else is flagship level. Which is becoming incredibly rare.
Source: Android Central
