Sony Xperia ZR review: Ready to dare

Decent connectivity

The Sony Xperia ZR has quad-band 2G and up to quad-band 3G connectivity depending on your regional model. Mobile data speeds can hit the impressive 21Mbps of HSDPA and 5.8Mbps HSUPA.

There's dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n with DLNA and Wi-Fi Direct, so you can easily share content on your phone with a DLNA TV or music player. There's also Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP.

MicroUSB handles charging and PC connectivity, and there's also USB On-the-go so you can attach external flash drives.

Media Remote isn't preinstalled on the Xperia ZR but you can get it off the Google Play Store for free. It will serve as a remote control for DLNA-capable BRAVIA TVs and Sony DVD/Blu-ray players too. There are a few versions of the interface ranging from simply changing the channels to mouse input and viewing disc history. This sort of a remote only works over the Wi-Fi connection.

NFC is also enabled on the Xperia ZR.

The Xperia ZR comes with Sony's Smart Connect app, which replaces the former LiveWare manager, although the functionality remains basically the same. With Smart connect, you can set your device to do a variety of things, like launch an app or set an alarm, whenever you connect an accessory, e.g. a headset or a charger. If a media app supports the Throw function (like the video player), you can use the Smart Connect app for DLNA purposes (sharing screen, etc.).

Smart Connect manager can, for example, launch the music player as soon as you connect a headset

Google Chrome is the sole web browser

The Xperia ZR comes with Google Chrome as the only web browser out of the box instead of the generic Android browser. Chrome is running on the WebKit rendering engine, so underneath the minimalist UI it's basically the same as the stock Android varieties.

At the top there's an URL bar with a refresh/stop button next to tabs and settings. You can switch between tabs with a wide horizontal swipe in either direction.

Opening the tabs area reveals a list of tabs which can be closed, again with a left or right swipe. The animation accompanying this action is neat, too.

Browsing GSMArena.com with Chrome

Of course, one of Chrome's strengths is its ability to seamlessly sync with the desktop version, using nothing but your Google account. This allows you to open an article on your PC and finish reading it on your mobile phone. It also syncs your bookmarks and favorite sites.

Google Chrome is generous with the settings as well. You can control almost every aspect of your web browsing from choosing what content you want to allow to load like JavaScript, images, cookies and pop-ups.

If you are out of Wi-Fi range and want to go easy on your data plan, you can, for example, choose temporarily not to load images. Digging into Chrome's deeper settings, you'll also have the option to turn form auto-fill and storing passwords on or off.

Switching between tabs • an incognito tab

Google Chrome does not support Adobe Flash, and neither does Android Jelly Bean in the first place.