The upcoming Mobile World Congress expo in Barcelona is always chock full of new products and exciting announcements surrounding the mobile industry. Sony will have their press announcement on Day 1 of the conference and it seems we’ll have two exciting new handsets to check out.
Swedish Android site, SweDroid, has published details of the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact which they say will be announced at the event, which takes place around 6:30pm AEDT on Monday 26th of February. The specs and pricing are from a Swiss site, so pricing will be different when/if the handsets make it to market here in Australia.
According to the website, the Xperia XZ2 will feature an 18:9 aspect ratio, 5.7″ full screen display with Gorilla Glass 5 included for protection. The new 18:9 aspect ratio look has apparently been christened ‘OmniBalance’, with the phones having a slimmer, longer look to accommodate the new style of display.
Internally the phone will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of on-board storage (no mention of microSD Card). The Xperia XZ2 Compact will apparently have the same internal hardware, but a smaller 5″ display with a 2160×1080 resolution.
Both phones will likely not include a 3.5mm headphone jack (boo!), and the fingerprint sensor has been moved from being built into the power button on the side of the phone to the rear of the phone. The phones will also use the vibration engine (haptic feedback?) to power a new music feature for the phone, which sounds a bit exciting.
The Xperia XZ2 will be priced at €799 (about $1254 AUD), while the XZ2 Compact will be priced at €599 (about $940AUD). Sony has been quite good about keeping handset pricing down previously, so we may see sharper price points if they launch here. The expected launch date for the handsets will be March 6th, but we’ll likely hear more about this on Monday.
