As an integral part of Android Jelly Bean Google Now is present on the Sony Xperia Tablet Z. You can get to it by holding the home button.
In addition to being able to recognize voice commands, Google Now will learn from your usage patterns, and display relevant information. For example, if you search for a particular sports team frequently, Google Now will display information for upcoming games you might want to watch.
Google Now predicts what info you need right now
The service interacts with you by generating cards which are displayed on your screen and give you a short overview of information it believes is relevant to you. Going to work in the morning? Google Now knows this and lets you know there's a big traffic jam on your usual way to the office, and will offer you an alternate route. This extends to a multitude of other areas, including weather, traffic, public transit stations, and nearby points of interest.
You can either type or talk to Google Now and the app will give you one of its aforementioned info cards (if available) and read you its contents aloud (you can disable this from the app settings). If there's no card to help with the answer to your question, Google Now will simply initiate a Google web search instead.
There is also a Google Now widget which generates information for you based on what your interests are.
Google Now has a card-based interface • Google Now widgets
The Sony Xperia Tablet Z uses the same chipset as its phone counterpart and has almost the same screen resolution - 1920 x 1200 vs. 1920 x 1080 - so we expect to see similar performance.
The CPU benchmarks, Benchmark Pi, Linpack and Geekbench 2 indeed put the two close together, though the Xperia Z / ZL duo has a slight advantage in Linpack. Still, it has a comfortable lead on the Google Nexus 10 tablet in the first two tests, but loses to it in Geekbench 2.
Lower is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
AnTuTu and Quadrant, which test the whole system (CPU, GPU, storage, etc.), continue this trend - the Xperia Tablet Z performs closely to the phone Xperia Z and ahead of the Nexus 10.
Higher is better
Higher is better
GLBenchmark shows a playable 32fps framerate on the older 2.5 Egypt benchmark (a few frames per second ahead of the Z / ZL phones), but the new, heavier 2.7 T-Rex benchmark drops the framerate down to 13fps. This benchmark is considerably heavier than current generation games.
The Nexus 10 is ahead with its Mali-604 GPU, but its native screen resolution is much higher than the WUXGA of the Xperia Tablet Z so it takes a more powerful GPU to run.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Epic Citadel is closer to what current Android games are like and shows the Tablet Z close to the 60fps software limit. That means that most of the time it runs at 60fps, with more complex areas dropping lower but without major drops. Here you can see the high resolution of the Nexus 10 work against it, making it just about even with the Tablet Z.
Higher is better
SunSpider shows relatively sluggish JavaScript performance, but that's usually the case with Chrome for Android. The stock browser performs better, but is not available on the Xperia Tablet Z. The Nexus 10 is slightly faster.
Browser Mark 2 puts the tablet close to the current Android flagships as does Vellamo. The Sony tablet pulled ahead of the Google Nexus 10 in those two benchmarks.
Lower is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Tip us
1.7m 126k
RSS
EV
Merch
Log in I forgot my password Sign up