Both the Sony Xperia ZL and the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active look to be great, high end handsets.
Sony and Samsung have both been doing their best to milk their flagships (the Sony Xperia Z and the Samsung Galaxy S4) for all they’re worth. Samsung have revealed the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active (itself in all likelihood influenced by the water resistant Sony Xperia Z), while Sony have made waves with the waterproof Sony Xperia ZR and now followed that up with the Sony Xperia ZL. We’ve put the Sony Xperia ZL and the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active head to head and you can read what we concluded below.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active vs Sony Xperia ZL – Build quality and durability
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is built to last. It’s dust and water resistant so you don’t need to be quite as careful with it as with most smartphones. However it’s got a typically Samsung plastic build, and its rugged design also means that it has ended up quite thick and heavy.
The Sony Xperia ZL on the other hand is quite an attractive phone. The front is almost all screen which means that it’s surprisingly short and not very wide either, though to fit all the internals in that space it’s actually ended up even fatter than the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active at 9.8mm (compared to the 9.1mm Active). It doesn’t look quite as premium as the Sony Xperia Z as that handsets glass back has been replaced with a rubbery plastic, but that does make it a little more durable and it’s still a lot more aesthetically pleasing than the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active. So ultimately the Galaxy S4 Active is the more durable while the Xperia ZL is the better looking.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active vs Sony Xperia ZL – Display
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active ( seen left in rumoured Orange Flare colour ) has a 5 inch 1080 x 1920 display with 441 pixels per inch. That’s the same as the Samsung Galaxy S4 and is mighty impressive.
The Sony Xperia ZL matches it though with an identical 5 inch 1080 x 1920 display and 441 pixels per inch. It’s arguably even more impressive on the Xperia ZL since the dimensions of the handset are mostly quite a lot smaller. Plus the Sony Xperia ZL uses the Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2, for enhanced image quality.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active vs Sony Xperia ZL – Power
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is just as powerful as the Samsung Galaxy S4 too, with a monstrous 1.9 GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM. It’s also running the latest version of Android (Jelly Bean version 4.2.2).
The Sony Xperia ZL isn’t quite as powerful, using as it does a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor alongside 2GB of RAM and Android 4.1.2. That still puts it at the high end of the market, but not quite in the same league as the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active. In practice most people probably won’t miss the extra horsepower of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, since the Sony Xperia ZL is already plenty powerful, but on paper there is quite a big difference between the two.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active vs Sony Xperia ZL – Camera
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active has an 8 megapixel lens - which is a step down from the 13 megapixel lens found on the Galaxy S4 proper. However it can shoot 1080p video at 30fps and it can be used underwater.
Unlike the Sony Xperia ZR, the Xperia ZL can’t be used underwater, but it does come with a 13 megapixel camera, which should be substantially better for dry land shots than the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active. It can also shoot 1080p video at 30fps.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active vs Sony Xperia ZL – Battery life, memory and connectivity
The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active comes with a massive 2600 mAh battery and while no battery stats have been released by Samsung it’s the same size as the one in the Samsung Galaxy S4, so we’d expect similarly good performance.
The Sony Xperia ZL ( left ) has a slightly smaller 2370 mAh battery and promises up to 500 hours of standby time, 13 hours of talk time or 40 hours of music playback. That’s pretty impressive in itself, so for now we’ll call battery life a draw.
The two handsets have an identical amount of memory, with both providing 16GB onboard and supporting micro SD cards of up to 64GB. It’s a shame though that neither one of them offers more than 16GB of onboard memory, since that’s a rather small amount in this day and age.
Connectivity options are much the same too, with both handsets supporting Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and they even both have infrared ports, allowing you to control TV’s and other electronics with them. It remains to be seen whether 4G versions of these handsets will be made available but we wouldn’t be surprised, in fact given how high end they both are we’d be more surprised if there weren’t 4G versions of them.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Active vs Sony Xperia ZL – Conclusion
Both the Sony Xperia ZL and the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active look to be great, high end handsets. The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active is the more powerful of the two; it’s also waterproof and dust proof so it’s a lot less fragile overall. On the other hand the Sony Xperia ZL looks a lot nicer, has a much better camera and arguably has a slightly better display thanks to its use of the Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2.
The biggest two differences are probably the camera and the durability so those are likely to be what you’ll most need to choose between - would you rather have the high durability of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active or the impressive camera of the Sony Xperia ZL? We can’t answer that, but they both look like highly compelling handsets in their own right.
