When Sony revealed that it’d be holding an MWC 2016 event, most folks were unsure about what we’d see there. Would it be a new Xperia Z flagship? Something else? Turns out it’s the latter, with “something else” being a new family of phones.
The three new members of Sony’x Xperia X series of phones include curved glass and premium materials. The X family is made up of the Xperia X Performance, Xperia X, and Xperia XA. All three phones include battery technology that Sony says will give you up to two days of battery life, as well as Qnovo Adaptive Charging tech that promises to extend the lifespan of their batteries.
The Xperia X Performance is the most high-end of the X family. It boasts Sony’s new flagship camera, a 23-megapixel sensor with a feature called Predictive Hybrid Autofocus that Sony says will automatically track an object that you’ve focused on. The camera is fast, too, going from standby to snapping an image in under 0.6 seconds. Meanwhile, the front of the Xperia X Performance is home to a 13-megapixel camera with “Sony’s renowned low-light sensors” for your selfie needs.
Under the Xperia X Performance’s glass and brushed metal hood lives an octa-core Snapdragon 820 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a microSD slot for adding up to 200GB of additional storage, and a 2700mAh battery. The Xperia X Performance’s screen is a 5-inch 1920x1080 panel, and on it will run Android 6.0 Marshmallow. There’s a combination power button and fingerprint reader mounted on the side of the X Performance, too.
Next in the line is the Xperia X, which shares many features with the X performance. That includes the 23-megapixel rear and 13-megapixel front cameras, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, microSD slot, fingerprint reader, and 5-inch 1920x1080 screen. The two differ when it comes to their processors, with the Xperia X packing a hexa-core Snapdragon 650. The Android 6.0-powered Xperia X also includes a slightly smaller 2620mAh battery.
Finally, we’ve got the Xperia XA. Its standout feature is its display, which features crazy-thin bezels. The panel itself is of the 5-inch 1280x720 variety. The rest of the Xperia XA’s spec list includes a MediaTek MT6755 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a microSD slot that supports cards up to 200GB in size, a 2300mAh battery, and Android 6.0. The XA has a 13-megapixel camera with what Sony says is a “super-fast autofocus,” and around front there’s an 8-megapixel selfie cam.
The Xperia X series will launch this summer, but Sony isn’t yet ready to talk pricing details for any of its new phones. One other detail that Sony has confirmed is that the devices will be coming to the US.
Sony’s new Xperia X series is a bit of a departure from its Xperia Z series of flagship phones. While the Z phones have always been about glass front and back, Sony is playing with metal on the X series — on the X Performance and X, at least — which helps to bring some variety to its lineup. And while the Xperia XA isn’t getting any of that metal, it does have a standout feature in its display with super-thin bezels.