Sony's mobile division has been in a rut for a while. If IDC's latest report is anything to go by, dominance by the likes of Huawei and Lenovo is only adding to the company's woes. Rather than sticking with the standard formula of yearly refreshes, Sony decided a few years ago to try bi-annual refreshes in order to keep things exciting and hopefully drive up sales. 

Our last outing with Sony's flagship smartphone was the Xperia Z3+ , which didn't exactly blow our socks off. This was just three months ago, and today, we already have its successor in the form of theXperia Z5 Dual. Our first encounter with the phone was at IFA 2015 where the company announced it along with its two siblings - the Xperia Z5 Premium and Xperia Z5 Compact. 

The Xperia Z5 Dual is on sale right now at Rs. 52,990 and will compete with flagships such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Apple iPhone 6s, to name a few. Sony is also in competition with itself here as its previous flagship is virtually identical to its new offering on paper and retails for a lot less now. Let's see if the company has managed to fix the nagging issues we had with the old model which could nudge prospective buyers into taking the leap this time around.

The Xperia Z5 Dual is a very pretty phone. The gold variant that we received looks particularly good and will certainly turn a few heads. We didn't get a retail unit so the headset was missing, but the charger and cable that come with it are made well and should last.

Specifications and software
The spec sheet of the Xperia Z5 Dual is virtually identical to that of its predecessor. The phone is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC, and has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage (expandable up to 200GB). You also get Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, USB OTG, GLONASS, NFC, FM radio, and a 2900mAh battery. 

The phone also has dual-SIM support with LTE for both SIM slots. It's nice to see Sony adding this functionality to its flagship models. The E6683 variant sold in India supports LTE for Band 40 and 3 but only up to Category 4 (150Mbps). The single SIM variant (E6653) supports LTE Category 6 but that hasn't been launched here. This is a bit disappointing since most other Android flagships today support the faster LTE specification.

The stereo speakers are a marked improvement from earlier Xperia Z models. Incoming notifications and calls are clearly audible and the volume level is loud enough for music or videos. The sound quality is not the best but we won't fault Sony too much here since they had to go through some level of waterproofing. With headphones, the audio quality is simply superb. Since we didn't get a bundled set, we tested this with a pair of Cowon EM1 earphones and were very pleased with the results. The highs and mids are very detailed and there's a very satisfying thump in low frequencies too. You can customise this further by tinkering around with the EQ settings to suit your taste.

The Xperia Z5 Dual gets a new 23-megapixel camera sensor which performs well under most lighting conditions. In daylight, landscapes and macro shots have very good detail and colours captured are quite accurate. You also get a very satisfying depth-of-field effect in close-up shots. The dedicated shutter button comes in handy for quickly launching the camera app and snapping pictures. Landscapes and close-up shots pack in good detail with accurate colours. Low-light shots are also decent but there's a noticeable purple hue in dark areas of the picture. The phone heats up rather quickly and you'll get warning messages every now and then that the app might close in the event the phone gets too hot. In fact, you'll be inclined to stop shooting pictures way before the app can close as the phone gets uncomfortable to hold beyond a point. We noticed that the phone takes about a second or two from the time you press the shutter to when the image is actually saved. This is a rather slow when you compare the near-instantaneous post-processing of the Galaxy Note 5 or the iPhone 6. It also explains why Sony has quietly removed burst mode from the camera app. Even the 'Timeshift Burst' add-on is which was present by default in previous offerings, is absent. We found 'Superior Auto' to be the best mode to shoot in. You can choose 'Manual' to select the type of scene but you'll have to drop the resolution to 8 megapixels to use it. We would have liked a professional mode which lets you control the aperture and shutter speed. Sony is reportedly planning to overhaul the camera app so hopefully, we'll see these features added to the new layout. Sony is also touting its 'Clear Image Zoom' feature, which is supposed to deliver clear pictures even with a 5x zoom. In reality, this works to an extent but pictures are noticeably less sharp and colours get muted. The front-facing 5.1-megapixel camera does a good job at selfies under natural light but indoors, under artificial lighting, pictures get a little noisy. Video recording quality is also good and you can switch between full-HD 30fps and 60fps. The phone does a good job with 4K video recording as well, with good detail and a steady frame rate.  

Verdict
Sony's new flagship comes just a few months after its previous flagship so we didn't expect much to change and truth be told, very little has. Sure, it is slightly better looking and the battery life has improved a bit, but you'd have to be a die-hard Sony fan to pay this much for it, especially when there are much better alternatives going for a whole lot less.

The Xperia Z5 Dual feels like a forced update from Sony given the phone is nearly spec-for-spec identical to the Xperia Z3+, which wasn't a show-stopper begin with. In order to compensate for this, Sony is throwing in some limited time freebies to tempt buyers but we're not sure how well that will work out.

For this money, you can get the Samsung Galaxy S6 64GB, which is a much better all-rounder. If you want to spend a bit less without compromising anything, then how about the Huawei Google Nexus 6P 64GB for Rs. 42,999? Our initial impressions of the phone are positive, and we'll have a full review of it soon.

The Sony Xperia Z5 Dual would have made a great flagship a year ago, but with the competition being fiercer than ever, it simply feels dated. Even if you go purely by specifications, the phone is underwhelming compared to others in its price range and even lower. Plus, the overall experience doesn't really bring anything new to the table and we still have to live with the shortcomings of previous Xperia flagships. What we need from Sony is something fresh; something to get excited about again. Until that happens, it's back to the drawing board.