One of the hottest recent releases is the Sony Xperia Z, an impressive smartphone that not only looks good but also has a very impressive specs sheet. Some of the highest-end smartphones are now releasing with a 13-megapixel rear camera instead of the standard 8-megapixel camera that featured on most of the top smartphones last year and the Sony Xperia Z is one of these. Today we have some news regarding camera images taken with the Xperia Z that give an idea of just how good the camera set-up is.

We think the Sony Xperia Z is a really notable handset and included it in our look at the top 5 smartphones for Q1, 2013. There may be many of you then who are considering purchasing this device and for those of you who use the camera on your smartphones regularly it looks like this would be a particularly good choice.

Just to remind you of the camera details the Xperia Z has a 13-megapixel rear camera with an Exmor RS sensor, autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, image stabilization, HDR and sweep panorama. It’s also capable of 1080p video capture @30fps with video light, video stabilizer, continuous autofocus and HDR and also sports a 2.2-megapixel front-facing camera with 1080p.

The team over at Android Central has been testing the camera of the Sony Xperia Z with sample images and a video showing the results. To give a comparison some images were also taken with the last year’s Xperia T, which also had a 13-megapixel rear camera but an Exmor R sensor rather than the Exmor RS. In the image above you can see an image from the Xperia T on the left and the improved image from the Xperia Z to the right. The findings were that overall the advantage of the Xperia Z’s Exmor RS sensor were very evident and that the Xperia Z “features one of the best smartphone cameras we’ve tested.”

Dynamic range was noted to be superior, with less fine-detail noise that was noticeable on previous Sony smartphone cameras along with better colors in dark situations. The one camera drawback (apart from some software foibles) that was noticed involved macro photography with the Xperia T managing to focus more closely than the Xperia Z. However the point was made that that the Xperia T had remarkable macro capabilities so this was not exactly a major surprise. As for video capture you can see the results from the Xperia Z in the video that we’ve embedded for you below this story for both HDR and 1080p.

You can see the full photo gallery at the Android Central link above so why not check out more of the images. Then please come back to us and tell us what you think of the photos and if the Xperia Z camera impressed you? Are you thinking of purchasing the Xperia Z and does the camera convince you? Let us know with your comments.