MWC has always been a playground for Sony and this year’s edition is no different. In addition to announcing the Xperia Ear “Open-style Concept” and Xperia Touch Interactive Android Projector, the Japan electronics giant also unveiled four new Xperia smartphones joining the X-series family. The four mobile devices include a flagship Xperia XZ Premium, Xperia XZs and “super mid-range” Xperia XA1 and XA1 Ultra. At this point, I have to wonder loud about how trying to cover every segments of the market is exceeding costly and makes no real business sense other than grabbing marketshare which does not translates to profitability.
Anywho, the flagship here, the XZ Premium, is naturally the one packed with some pretty impressive tech, including Sony’s new Motion Eye camera system that offers a mind-bending 960fps super slow motion video capture and playback (!??) and an eye-watering 5.5-inch 4K HDR display, which also happens to be the world’s first. It is no surprise that Sony’s expertise in both imaging and TV displays helped to make the aforementioned possible.
Powering the clockwork is equally impressive too. Under the hood, it gets a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Mobile Platform featuring Snapdragon X16 LTE modem, placing the XZ Premium firmly in the Gigabit Class LTE domain which supports up to a blazing 1Gbps. So, you getting the picture now? 4K display and fiber optic speeds on-the-go? The ‘picture’ here is, you will be needing more mobile data. Clearly, there are way too many drool-worthy features to talk about and so, instead of me spitting out sentence after sentence of features that will only make me look like a Sony’s marketer, we shall point you to the official product page to learn more.
Before you jump on the table, you may like to know that Sony Xperia XZ Premium is set to be available globally, in Luminous Chrome and Deepsea Black, starting late spring 2017. However, pricing will only be known closer to launch (trust me, it is definitely not going to be cheap, but of course, you already knew that, right?). Anyways, if its too pricey and Motion Eye technology and its wonder super slow-mo is what you are after, there’s always the less premium XZs to fall back on.
But XZs will only be available to select markets, starting April and also, pricing is not known. Made no mistake though, the XZs, which has a “lesser” display coming in at FHD, is also a “flagship” device, but I am sure it won’t be make a hole any bigger than the Premium. Or, if you are ok with just taking good images, there’s the “super mid-ranger,” the Xperia XA1 and XA2 to look forward to (also in spring).
And here’s a couple more look at the Xperia XZ Premium:
All images courtesy of Sony Mobile.
