Sony Xperia XZ Premium First Smartphone with 4K HDR Display

With Samsung S8 missing in action on the Mobile World Congress 2017 showroom floor, other smartphone manufacturers are stepping up to the plate to grab everyone’s attention with their flagship phone announcements. At the Sony booth, they have announced the new Xperia XZ Premium flagship phone which boasts the title of being the first phone to feature a 4K HDR display. It looks slightly bulkier and has thicker bezel compared to most flagship smartphones but the Xperia XZ Premium has good reason to be considering the features it packs inside.

Aside from the 4K HDR display, the Sony XPeria XZ Premium packs 4GB of memory and features an all-new Motion Eye camera that can capture an astounding 960 frames-per-second and boasts playback that is currently unmatched at 4x slower compared to any smartphone. The main 19MP camera uses a 1/2.3” Exmor RS™ sensor with a 1.22μm pixel pitch. It also features predictive hybrid auto-focus and predictive capture to make photos and video capturing a cinch. Users can readily take photos and videos as quick as 0.5 seconds. The secondary camera has 13 megapixels and has a 1/3.06” Exmor RS™ for mobile image sensor with a 22mm Wide-angle F2.0 equivalent lens.

The Sony Xperia XZ Premium measures 156 x 77 x 7.9 mm, weighs 195g made from metal and glass with IP65/68 resistance rating (Gorilla Glass 5). It will be available in both luminous chrome or deepsea black versions and will have a 3,230mAh battery with QuickCharge 3.0 and Qnovo battery-life technology.

With the Snapdragon 835 in short supply due to Samsung hoarding them for their own S8 flagship phone, many companies are delaying launch like the Sony Xperia XZ Premium which is expected to hit the market sometime in “late spring 2017”, but the non-premium Xperia XZs will be available earlier in March. The non-premium Xperia XZs will have a smaller 1080p display and a Snapdragon 820 but will have 4GB of RAM and have the slow-motion feature (hence the ‘s’ designation). It will also be available in an additional third color of Ice Blue and will retail for $700 USD. There is no price announced for the Xperia XZ Premium yet.