Sony Xperia XZ3: unboxing and first look

The Xperia XZ3 is the best and latest phone by Sony and it has finally arrived in our office, meaning that it's time to unbox it and take a closer look at one of the most exciting phones that Sony has ever made.

Why are we so fascinated with the XZ3, you wonder? We got to see it first-hand at the IFA tech show in Berlin and we were blown away by the display and Sony has also made some welcome changes to the design that make a big difference in handling this phone. This is the first Sony phone with an OLED screen, a beautiful Quad HD+ panel that looks very sharp and features lively, impressive colors that really pop at you.

But before we dive deeper, let's unbox the XZ3 and see what's...

Inside the box:

The USB-C to audio dongle is the big giveaway: this phone does not have a headphone jack, just like many other new Android phones this year. This means that you would have to either rely on USB-C headphones (not that many out there and maybe not a great idea) or use wireless earbuds that might be a bit more expensive.We are not even surprised and Sony does not provide much of an explanation as to why it killed the headphone jack, but it's definitely gone.

With this little detail clear, the Xperia XZ3 is really a looker. We have the black version here and it looks gorgeous in those first few seconds, until you use it for a while and notice all the fingerprint smudges, but that's something all glass phones suffer from. Apart from that, the phone is relatively tall and narrow, with a curved back and a curved screen up front, so the phone lays really nicely in the hand.

The OLED screen is 6" in size, features a Quad HD+ resolution (1440 x 2880 pixels) and is capable of displaying stunning colors. It took Sony long to adopt OLED screens, but the wait is over and this screen is a beauty worth admiring.

For all else, this is your standard 2018 flagship: it is powered by the top-tier Snapdragon 845 chip, has 64 gigs of on-board storage (with microSD card support) and features 4GB RAM.

The XZ3 ships with Android 9 Pie aboard, the latest and greatest Android version, and it adopts most of the features coming with this update, except for the new gesture navigation. This really is a pity: you can only use the virtual on-screen buttons for navigating around and they feel really slow and clunky after using phones with gesture-based interfaces.

This round up our first impressions of the Sony Xperia XZ3: a beautiful phone with a beautiful display.

We will go much deeper with benchmarks, camera tests and more in our in-depth review that is coming up soon, but in the meantime, feel free to ask us: what do you want to know about the XZ3? We'll do our best to answer in the comments and in our final review.