Nice phone with fantastic camera. Make sure you purchase genuine SD CARD from JL

Sony actually has a top-end smartphone now. Learning from the stumbles of the rocky six month transition between the venerable Z Series phones and the Xperia X Performance, the new Xperia XZ brings back a little bit of finesse into Sony's smartphone design.

The Sony Xperia XZ offers very good performance, battery life and cameras, along with waterproofing. For those buying outright, there's a good case for choosing this phone over the Galaxy S7 but on a plan your choice is limited to Telstra.

As the price rises, expectations also lift up and why wouldn't they? It's natural. After all a person is investing his money into something which he expects to be reliable and long lasting.

Robust Build and beautiful design; Bright display even in direct sunlight; Precise color reproduction; Speedy Touch sensor; Quick charge; Superb camera

Heats too much; Stops functioning after heating too much; It restarts every time you insert or remove Sim card; Lags sometimes(could be unit specific

At the end of the day, the Sony Xperia XZ delivers quite a mixed bag of goods. Elements that appeared easy to come by for Sony, like the design philosophy, has clearly been an issue this time around. Other aspects, like the camera, performance and battery life are quite good.

With the Xperia XZ, Sony has managed to deliver a pretty good smartphone, but not a great one. It has a great screen, fast rear-camera autofocus, is water resistant (if you don't forget to close the ports) and delivers smooth performance at an all-day-long battery life.

Sony Xperia XZ is all about its camera prowess. And the 23MP rear camera is truly capable of taking some stunning shots in bright outdoors.

Sony has had an interesting year so far. It's seen the launch of several handsets, including two flagships – the Xperia X and Xperia XZ. The latter of these phones is the subject of this review. If you wish to find out a bit more about the former then I recommend reading my earlier review .

The Xperia XZ is an attractive phone in design if you can get on with the angular style and while it's cheaper than rivals such as the iPhone 7 and Google Pixel, you can get better value with some older phones like the Samsung Galaxy S7.

There is another catch too, cost. Although confirmed pricing isn't here yet, given the lower specced Sony Xperia X is already one of the most overpriced handsets on the market, expect the XZ to be anything but affordable when it hits retailers in October.