With features that almost match its larger sibling, the Z1 Compact caused a stir when announced at CES last month and while it’s due in Australia as a Telstra exclusive in April, Mobicity have just opened up pre-orders for the Z1 Compact on their website.
Available to pre-order in four colours – Pink, Lime and of course Black and White – the Z1 Compact is unfortunately not compact in price, at least at the moment – sometimes the price drops as the stock availability draws near – with Mobicity asking for $729.95 + postage to pre-order. That price makes it a full $80 more than ordering the full Xperia Z1 LTE, which Mobicity are currently selling for $649.95 + postage.
While the full size Z1 comes with a 5″ 1080P display and a 3,000mAh battery and the Z1 Compact which comes with a 4.3″ 720P display and 2300mAh battery, the Z1 Compact is a pretty full featured smartphone. All the features of the full sized Z1, including the same 20.7MP Exmor RS image sensor and G Lens, with BIONZ image processing for image stabilisation and full IP55/IP58 Ingress Protection to guard against dust and water.
There’s no exact date for shipping, although Mobicity are hoping to have more details on availability by the end of this week. If you’re deadset on the Z1 Compact, then head over to the Mobicity website.
will buy this for my girl on her birthday after couple of months when the price gets reduced and being sold by local carriers 🙂
Yup.
Don’t need to preorder. When it arrives, there wont be a problem buying it.
Don’t need it on day one. Wait a month and the price will drop.
A bit of calmness and self restraint and things will work out.
Hmm, I think if I wanted a 720p, 4.5″ish phone – I’d be getting the MotoG for ~$250 (a third the price). Or if I were particularly needing 4G, it would be a Nexus 5 (two thirds the price).
People really need to start holding companies with silly price expectations to account. There is no excuse for prices greater than $500-$550.
Well you clearly don’t understand the specs and engineering involved. I agree that it is fairly pricey, but when you think of things that other phones have yet to achieve – waterproofing, 20meg camera etc – add that to the specs you get, and you realise that you’re confusing size of screen with internal capabilities. Which is exactly what makes this phone great.
Sigh.
YOU don’t understand how the BoM add up. Take a look at some of the breakdowns, and how the component costs stack up. The reason for the high cost is a high (and unacceptable) profit margin attempt by Sony.
I’m sorry but just cost of goods aren’t the only thing. There RnD costs, testing costs, prototype costs and manufacturing costs. Just because of the pieces of the phone add up to $200-$300 doesn’t mean thats what it cost to make a phone.
Sigh, what Josh said. Don’t be so patronising, especially when your blatantly wrong by completely ignoring R & D costs. Rememeber the BOM cost for Moto X and the huge difference between retail. Now Moto sold a lot in the USA yet they lost money again. How come they’re not turning big profits if BOM is all we need to consider?
2 days battery life for z1 compact vs can’t even get through a day N5. That’s worth a premium IMO.
I don’t understand why people expect this phone to be cheaper than the full-sized Z1, considering it’s brand new, IPS and all the internals are the same.
Because the Z1 Compact is smaller than the Z1, and the Compact has lower specs in certain areas than the Z1.
Smaller is actually *harder* from an engineering viewpoint – packing everything from the massive Z1 into the Z1 Compact is impressive. The battery costs basically nothing, and the screen, whilst lower resolution (which only makes sense, because it’s smaller physically) is actually higher quality than the Z1. I’d expect them to be roughly equivalently priced if they were both released at the same time. Now, the Z1 is 6 months old, and the Compact is actually cheaper from reasonable retailers.
Agreed pdffs.
It’s also launching 4 – nearly 5 – months after the Z1, therefore the technology inside should have come down in price, paired with the bulk buying power of Sony purchasing massive amounts of the same processor, Camera, RAM, System Board etc from manufacturers this should be at least on par, if not cheaper as the cost of components in the battery and screen would be cheaper as well.
I doubt the cost of the SOC, etc has come down by a large margin in the last few months, since as you say – Sony already has massive buying power. The screen is lower resolution, but it is IPS, so that likely negates some of the savings there, and the battery costs basically nothing. But yes, all those things equate to some modest cost savings. But this is still a flagship spec’d phone, and release pricing is always somewhat inflated. All that said – and as I mentioned earlier – the Z1 Compact *is* actually a little cheaper than… Read more »
Why do you say the battery costs nothing? I suspect the battery is more expensive than you expect. Why did Google not pack a G2 size battery in the Nexus 5? The generally accepted answer is cost cutting which seems to disprove your comments about battery cost.
A replacement SGS4 2800mah battery is ~$25 retail. So, it’s probably ~$12 cost to the OEM, ergo you’re talking about a few dollars difference for the relative capacity of the Z1 vs Z1 Compact.
I have zero knowledge about the provenance of your ‘generally accepted’ Nexus 5 statement, but I struggle to see how it can make a lot of sense.
An OEM replacement battery from Samsung’s AU website is $40. I’d be much more comfortable using that figure. Now factor in that this is for customers that have already bought in to a manufacturers ecosystem so they may not be paying as much as Samsung would charge a new customer.
Also removable batteries are slightly different to the enclosed batteries such as those in the Sony Xperia range we are discussing.
Thanks for three statements that are meaningless to the context of this discussion.
The fact that RRP is more expensive doesn’t change the fact that the OEM pays a fraction of that price.
Obviously removable and fixed batteries are different, but surely fixed batteries are cheaper? So… you’re arguing against yourself.
Again, you’re quoting RRP, and for an accessory with additional parts *and* from *2 years ago*. This is entirely irrelevant.
Except this is directly from the OEM. I clearly stated that.
I suspect that fixed batteries are cheaper to produce but more costly to install in devices because of the extra labor involved.
That’s what they charge, RRP, for a spare part, not what it costs them, and if channels can still make a profit at $25 for an official battery, then Samsung is still making a profit at less than that value, which means their cost is almost certainly somewhere in the $10-15 range
Labour costs are also irrelevant, because we’re talking purely about materials cost when comparing manufacturing savings on the Z1 Compact vs the Z1.
To suggest that BOM is the only cost comparison that needs to be made has already been discussed in these comments in a response to Fred. My take and another persons take who also happens to be a Josh is that this is to simplistic an anaslysis.
Obviously. Except that with a change of battery capacity, this really is the key metric. Also, the other argument suggests that there may be *additional* costs involved, which would seem to support my argument.
I feel like you’re just arguing for the sake of it now, since half your statements seem to support my original point. So, I’m not going to engage with you any more, on any topic. Good day.
My initial point was you may have underestimated the cost of the battery savings in the BOM. I stand by that and haven’t changed my point during this discussion. I would also suggest that the same could be said about the reduced screen size.
Despite that, yes I do agree with other points you’ve made or implied.
The tone of your initial comment did rub me the wrong way especially after you later admitted having no knowledge of well known Android tech news such as the smaller battery in the N5 being reported as a cost saving measure.
You also seem to be unaware of the problems Samsung has been having with official looking rip off batteries that explode. Are these half priced batteries really OEM or fakes?
If it looks to good to be true it probably is.
I like you fail to see how a 700maH reduction in size could be credited with effective cost savings but that is pretty much unanimously how the tech press have reported this. If you were or still are unaware of this perhaps you shouldn’t be trying to instruct/inform people in the comments sections of tech sites.
I have not paid particular attention to the N5, so I haven’t seen this conjecture. With that said, I’ll thank you not to tell me where, or what, you think I’m allowed to post.
You’re telling people what they should think. I’m just pointing out that if you’re going to admit you’re ignorant on particular well known smartphone topics you probably shouldn’t be trying to instruct people in this field. I appreciate your thanks but I’ll continue to give my advice where I see fit too.
If your ‘advice’ is telling people to shut up, maybe you should take a good look at yourself.
I’m not going to continue this line of discussion with you.
Yes it is a case of both of us being hypocrites. I’m glad you’ve realised that 😉
Mobicity, the most overpriced grey market shop ever.
I’ve never had problems with mobicity. They might be a little pricey, but it’s a great site.
We’re not beholden to MobiCity; if any other importers are selling the Z1 Compact, let us know and we’ll post on it. Idle complaints about MobiCity’s pricing aren’t really productive for anyone.
Agreed. I seem to remember the Moto X was $800 – $900 from Mobicity at release. So $700 odd makes me hopeful that other shops like Kogan might sell this at closer to $500 at some stage.
Not sure how the camera can offset the screen and battery…especially in terms of pricing margins.
Will be curious as to how the two compare.