Not long to wait for the fourth incarnation of the Sony Xperia 1, according to Sony teaser…
The upcoming flagship will succeed the excellent Sony Xperia III(Image credit: Sony)
Sony has announced its ready to bring the next generation of Xperia to the market and we won’t have to wait long either as the tech giant has confirmed a launch date of May 11. The video teaser makes it apparent that the phone we will see announced next month will be the eagerly awaited Xperia 1 IV, successor to the excellent Sony Xperia 1 III, which has pioneered a new breed of periscope zoom with its quad-camera system. There have been two large Xperia 1 IV leaks so far, which, assuming they are correct, tell us a lot about the upcoming smartphone.
Last month Giznext shared exclusive 5K render images of the Xperia 1 series flagship camera phone’s design – assuming they’re accurate it features a similar design to the Xperia 1 III. The images show a flat-edge design, as seen in the previous-gen model but with slightly different dimensions - the upcoming model comes in at 164.7 x 70.8 x 8.3mm and 9.5mm thickness, including camera bump.
We can also see a tiny selfie camera embedded within the top bezel: there’s no punch-hole cut-out or waterdrop notch. On the back panel we can see a good sixed vertical camera module with three sensors and an LED flash. The bottom panel shows the SIM card tray along with the USB Type-C port charging and data transfers.
From the leaked images we can also see the Xperia 1 IV looks to have a 3.5mm headphone jack on the upper left of the top frame and volume, power and shutter key on the right spine. According to this leak we can also expect the power key on the Xperia 1 IV to feature a physical fingerprint scanner for biometrics.
Sony Xperia 1 IV: Leaked specs
The biggest Xperia 1 IV leak so far came back in January via a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo by the usually reliable Zackbuks (via Notebookcheck). According to the leak, the Sony Xperia 1 IV will be powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip with RAM ranging from 12 GB to 16 GB and storage in either 256 GB or 512 GB configurations. The tipped 5,000-mAh battery is said to be complimented by new 45W charging.
Camera wise, the Sony Xperia 1 IV is said to have the same 12 MP Sony Exmor RS IMX36312 ultra-wide sensor as the Xperia 1 III but with both the main lens and telephoto getting upgrades. This does make sense as Sony do tend to choose large sensors over resolution for their smartphones, so we could be looking at 12 MP + 12 MP + 12 MP. The specs in this leak are indeed as we would expect for the Mark 4 variant of the Xperia 1 smartphone, which has always been very well received. Not long to wait to see if it’s correct…
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Rachael is a British journalist with 18 years experience in the publishing industry. Since working on www.digitalcameraworld.com, she’s been freelancing, and contributing to some of the world’s best-loved websites and magazines including T3.com and TechRadar.com and has also had a book, iPad for Photographers, published. She's currently acting as editor of 5GRadar.com - a website specializing in the latest cellular technology.
