Sony isn’t giving up yet on smartphones, as the company has announced the new XPERIA XZ flagship on the stage in IFA 2016 today, it is a 5.2-inch smartphone that sports the most recent performance hardware, most importantly it comes with a ground breaking 23-megapixel camera wiht a “triple iamge sensing technology, a 4.6-inch Xperia X Compact is also announced as well for those who prefer smaller displays.
The XPERIA XZ’s camera sensing technology comprises of Predictive Hybrid Autofocus found on its predecessor, there’s a new laser autofocus hardware and an RGB infrared sensor for better colour accuracy, more impressively the camera’s stabilization is done in 5-axis, which stabilizes the X and Y axes, yaw, pitch and roll, which gives it one of the best stabilization tech you can find on a smartphone and you can pretty much expect a DJI Osmo stabilized 4K video on the phone. On the other hand, the selfie shooter takes an impressive 13-megapixel resolution with a Sony Exmor R lens that could go up to a whooping ISO 6400.
Performance wise, we are looking at a Snpadragon 820 chipset mated to 3GB RAM and 32GB flash memory, while the RAM department might seem a little underwhelming, it should still work fine considering Sony’s software is very close to stock, we are also looking at a 1080p display this round which is still fine, the phone is water-resistant instead of waterproof like the Z series predecessor, which is better than the Xperia X Performance, it however has Qnovo adaptive charging and USB-C.
The smaller Xperia X Compact gets a specs downgrade but thankfully still isn’t too shabby, it comes with a Snapdragon 650 chipset, a lower 720p display resolution and a 5-megapixel selfie shooter, thankfully the phone shares the same amount of RAM, memory and main camera hardware as its flagship sibiling, you won’t be able to take 4K videos though, which is kind of weird of Sony to remove that since the hardware is still rather capable of achieving that.
Sony is set to launch the XPERIA XZ early October in Mineral Black, Forest Blue and Platinum, while the XPERIA X Compact will start selling in the UK next week, so let’s hope Sony give these two devices a reasonable price tag.
