 Eleven months ago the Droid Turbo became my daily driver phone. Not thanks to its slim sexy design, outstanding camera, or timely Android updates, but rather because of its massive 3900 mAh battery. Because while there might be things about the Droid Turbo that suck, damn it, it can suck all day. And for some of us, that's where the search for a companion device ends. But there is another way to skin that particular cat, and that's where today's device, the Xperia Z5 Compact, gets very interesting. In addition to the tried and true strap more double A's to its strategy, Sony has made some interesting hardware choices that could just earn this device a spot in my front pocket for good. Corsair's RMI series power supplies feature premium components for great performance with very low noise. Check out the link in the video description to learn more. Let's start with the physical overview because the Xperia Z5 Compact is completely unlike any flagship class phone that I've put my hands on in... has it been five years since I made this video? I bought an iPhone 4. It's actually small enough for me to operate it with one hand. So at the front you'll find a 4.6 inch IPS touchscreen along with a 5.1 megapixel 1080p selfie camera, a Sony logo, and wow, dual front-facing speakers. Okay, they're not amazingly loud and they're kind of tinny sounding with less stereo separation than a larger device would have, but this comes with the territory when you make the speaker smaller and closer together and clarity, particularly of dialogue, was a very strong point compared to other devices I've used recently. But then again, these speakers are up against speakers that fire into your palm and firing into your palm has never been a successful strategy. On the back is a flash and a 23 megapixel rear camera featuring a Sony sensor and recording modes ranging from 4K at 30fps through 1080p at 60 and 720p at 120. And then really not much else unless you count the orange dbrand skin on there. At the top and bottom are a couple of mics for noise cancellation, a headphone jack, and a microbe charging port. I sure wish this had been type C. On the right is the power button that doubles as an adequate, if not especially fast or accurate fingerprint sensor, an unusually positioned volume rocker that had me kind of scratching my head until I'd used the phone for a while and realized that having it out of the way like this is perfect. The only reason that I'm messing around with the volume button on all my other phones is to reset it when I accidentally press the damn thing. So bravo Sony on that one. And then finally, there's also a dedicated camera button that was a total pleasure to use, especially once I figured out that it had a half press so I can lock in my focus and exposure before quickly snapping the shot. On the left side, you'll find a wrist strap loop if you're into hanging jewels off your phone or whatever and a watertight flap that helps the phone achieve its IP68 Ingress protection rating, making it theoretically safe to have exposed to fresh or even chlorinated water for short periods of time. With that said, I wouldn't bet your $500 investment given Sony's recent backpedaling act on just how safe it is to use your device underwater. Under that flap, we'll find a nano SIM slot and wow, another surprise, a micro SD slot. Now in some cases, where reasonably priced higher capacity models exist, I don't consider SD expansion a huge deal. But since we're talking about a phone here that records 4K video and only has 32 gigs of internal storage, I see this as a huge boon for potential buyers. And on that note, I guess we haven't actually done the whole spec thing yet, have we? It's pretty darn similar to its big brothers, the Z5 and the Z5 Premium with a Snapdragon 810 8-core CPU beating at its heart at 2 GHz on the four more powerful cores that throttled pretty decisively during synthetic tests, but at least had the decency to stay cool during normal operation and an Adreno 430 graphics processor. For RAM, we're looking at a middling 2 gigs of DDR3L. We've got the usual array of wireless tech with Bluetooth, AC Wi-Fi and FM radio and inside is a 2700 mAh battery. Not that exceptional sounding, but there's more here than meets the eye. So let's get back to the screen for a minute. Sony went all modern flagship on some aspects of this phone with the reduction in system memory from 3 gigs in the full size models being one of the main spec differences, but for the screen, Sony went with a very conservative 720p LCD. And I know this might be confusing to regular viewers who are used to me saying, more is better, give me more, but I actually love this decision. That's still a very respectable 323 pixels per inch, about equivalent to Apple's Retina display standard. And the lower resolution combined with the smaller size means that the Z5 Compact performed as well or better than the Droid Turbo in my about how much battery do I have left at the end of each day test with usually anywhere from 15 to 30% left in the tank, even after demanding days with long phone calls and even moderate GPS use. Absolutely fantastic. Not that going back to a small screen didn't have its drawbacks. Sony opted for on-screen buttons, something I liked when holding the phone in landscape mode, but eats up valuable screen real estate. For every improvement to the content consumption experience that I got from those front-facing speakers, the smaller screen really clawed some of it back and man, I had really forgotten how much space gets taken up by the number row in SwiftKey and suggested websites in a browser when you have so much less space to work with. Sony software fortunately didn't make life more difficult. The minimum text size freed up some room and overall, even though the Marshmallow update hasn't arrived yet, I was pleased by the responsiveness, the visual style and the options provided in the settings menu. There was nothing that really stood out to me as like, wow, Sony, this is like super dumb, which I guess leads us to the camera. To be clear, it's not the iPhone 6 or 6s and it's not the Galaxy S6 Edge, both of which offer faster camera and launch times, faster shutter speeds and faster saving times for pictures taken mid-video and completed video files. But the dedicated shutter button helps a fair bit with this and the photo results, while not optically stabilized, were good enough in most situations. I think if I was designing the phone, I might choose a less wide lens, so I don't have to stand like three feet from a given subject, but all in all, it's a fairly minor complaint, which leads us to conclusion time. There are some things I'm going to miss about my old daily driver. Taking the downgrades that come with our upgrades is one of the crosses that we Android people have to bear, like the gestures to launch the flashlight, then they work, and camera, there we go, and the notification peak feature, but overall, the easy one-handed operation, waterproofness and improved camera while retaining outstanding battery life have won me over. I just can't wait to see what the Marshmallow update and the new updated camera app bring to the table because I am already loving this phone. Speaking of loving your phone, Dbrand Skins, they make these awesome vinyl covers, so you can practice safe phone love. They not only make your phone look better, you can choose from a wide variety of different skins and styles and use the configurator on their site to check out all the different options, but they also protect it from incidental bumps and scratches. Now to be clear, you drop it screen down, your Dbrand Skin is not going to do anything, but if you're carrying it around in your pocket and you don't want it to get all scratched and scuffed, a skin can be a perfect and low-cost option to keep your phone looking like the day it was new, and they do more than just phones. Dbrand offers skins for game controllers, consoles, and even some computers, and this is pretty cool. Coming very soon, Dbrand is going to be doing a limited edition run of kind of an LTT color carbon fiber orange. Actually, it's the same as the one that you saw on Scrapyard War Season 3, so stay tuned for that. So check them out over at dbrand.com slash whatever. I'm sure we'll have a link below me and it'll be linked in the video description, and check out what your device will look like with one of their precision cut gorgeous vinyl skins. So thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do, but if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button, or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon, instructions up there, buying a cool shirt like this one, or with a direct monthly contribution. Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next, so click that little button in the top right corner to check out Luke's Fallout 4 build guide, log, whatever it is. Basically, he builds a computer inside a plastic bomb that's pretty sick.