Sony usually announces smartphones in threes: A ‘Premium’ version, ‘regular’ version and a ‘compact’ version and they sport the same design. This year however, they started by announcing the Premium version first but the Xperia XZs that was announced alongside it didn’t quite feel like it was part of its squad.
Well today, Sony has finally announced the Xperia XZ Premium siblings that make up this generation of Xperia phones: The Xperia XZ1 and the XZ1 Compact which share the same design language as the Xperia XZ Premium.
Starting with the XZ1, it has a 5.2 inch 1080p HDR display, 4GB RAM, 64GB of fast UFS memory, IP65/68 certified and has the latest and greatest Snapdragon 835 processor to keep everything running speedy. It also has the 19MP Motion Eye camera that we saw on the Premium and has that cool trick of shooting bursts of 960fps super slow motion video and not forgetting the relatively high resolution 13MP selfie camera. They decided to make the battery even smaller compared to the XZ and XZs where you get a 2700mAh unit compared to a 2900mAh on the former.
True to their name, Sony did not skimp packing the XZ1 Compact with features. It has a 4.6 inch 720p display which is basic in this sense but still gave it the powerful Snapdragon 835 which means it will fly through tasks with ease. It has 32GB of UFS memory, 4GB RAM and the same 19MP Motion Eye camera as the XZ1 and XZ Premium but sports an 8MP wide angle selfie camera compared to the 13MP on the XZ1. Interesting enough, it shares the same battery capacity as its XZ1 sibling (2700mAH) which coupled with the lower screen resolution and the Snapdragon 835 means that it might have really good battery life.
The Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact will also ship with a new app called 3D Creator. 3D Creator will allow you to create 3D objects from your Xperia phone like your own 3D avatar which you can use it as your phone’s wallpaper or you can share it on your social media accounts. Sony is not new in the AR game and it is great they’ve decided to add a new feature to their collection.
The cool thing about the two is that they will ship with the newly announced Android 8.0 Oreo in September, joining the likes of Google Pixel and Google Nexus, which is a big deal on its own right.
Question is, are you interested in the new Xperia phones?
