Sony Xperia Z

Xperia Z is probably the most attractive of the lot, with its superbly thin 7mm chassis, 1080p 5-inch screen and quad core Qualcomm processor kicking things along under the hood. In short, this is the most powerful Sony smartphone ever made, and the brand tells us it's the first model it's really had a strong influence on since it took the manufacturing over from the Ericsson joint venture. The new design language will permeate through the entire Bravia range apparently, bringing an iconic look to products in the TV, phone and other categories. It make sense, given Sony needs to push the 'connected home' message, but also probably means the Xperia Tablet S will be obsolete before it's even had a chance to get going. Look at the phone on a table and you'll be surprised how washed out the display seems, compared to the almost printed-on nature of the Samsung S3 or Galaxy Note 2. The interface is also a pleasure to use: it's Android Jelly Bean 4.1 running on top of a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad core CPU with 2GB of RAM.