BARCELONA, SPAIN—Sony continues to crank out some impressive mobile hardware. And while not all of the company’s latest handsets and tablets will be available in the U.S., they are still cool enough that we want to show them to you.
Here at the Mobile World Congress show, Sony trotted out a line-up of new Xperia mobiles: a very light and slim 10-inch tablet, an impressive mid-range smartphone, and two low-end phones, all with Android 5.0 Lollipop on board.
First up is the most intriguing announcement of the day: the Xperia M4 Aqua handset. It’s a mid-range waterproof smartphone with a premium look, and it has some top-shelf specs inside even though its very reasonably priced. Much of the M4 Aqua’s design comes borrowed from the flagship Xperia Z Series. The body is both dustproof and waterproof, with an IP65/68 rating. Magically, it retains the waterproof rating even though the microUSB port remains cap-less, thanks to a new nano coating technology. It’s nice that you get a waterproof port without a little dangling rubber plug to worry about. The display is 5.2 inches with 720 x 1280, 293 ppi pixel resolution. A second plate of tempered glass is embedded on the back side, and there’s a color option for the metallic plate beneath the glass. Choose between white, black, silver, and coral red.
Inside, the M4 Aqua packs a 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa-core 64-bit processor. There’s a nice 13-megapixel camera powered by Sony’s Exmor RS mobile sensor with bright f/2.0 aperture and ISO sensitivity up to 3200. The front camera has a 5-megapixel sensor.
Those aren’t sky-high specs, but they are more than modest, and the Xperia M4 Aqua should be a very capable Lollipop phone. The build quality is also quite high. So consider that it will be priced at “less than $350″ according to Sony—that’s a deal. It’ll be available across Europe in Spring, and there’s no word yet on U.S. carriers.
An Android Tablet With an Excellent Screen
Also debuting today is Sony’s latest top-tier Android slate, the Xperia Z4 tablet. It follows the company’s previous efforts, the Z2 Tablet and the Z3 Tablet Compact, straight-up borrowing features from those models in some places, and improving upon them in others.
Like the Z2 before it, the Z4 sports a 10.1-inch IPS display. But here, the resolution has been improved up to 2K level: 2048 x 1080 pixels. Given the brilliant and sharp screen, the Xperia Z4 Tablet should be an excellent device for watching movies and playing games. The Z4 is built on an updated Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core 64-bit processor, with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage—not a lot, but there’s a microSD card slot. Also, the 6,000mAh battery has a power-saving mode (which Sony calls “STAMINA”) that turns off background functions to extend your battery life. Even without that enabled, Sony says the Z4 should give you up to 17 hours of video playback. There are also front-facing stereo speakers that can (via a software toggle) generate an impressive surround sound effect. And just like its predecessors, the Z4 Tablet is waterproof and dust tight with IP68 rating.
While all that makes it sound like the ideal machine for watching movies and killing time, it does have another, more serious trick up its white, lightly starched sleeve: the Z4’s premier accessory is a Bluetooth keyboard docking case. Like other keyboard cases, the tablet snaps into place, pairs wirelessly, and gives you an arrangement that’s very much like a laptop.
Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet will be available starting June 2015 at a price tag yet to be announced—but rumored to be right around $400. The Bluetooth keyboard will cost extra, though we don’t know how much.
And Two Cheap Phones Too
The last two devices Sony demonstrated here in Barcelona are the low-end Xperia E4 Dual and Xperia E4g, its LTE variant. These phones were already announced in the past couple of weeks, but the company was showing them off again here. Both handsets have thicker, less-than-elegant bodies. They each have a 5-inch qHD (540 x 960) IPS display, a 1.3GHz Mediatek quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal memory, and a microSD slot for up to another 32GB. The main cameras shoot at 5 megapixels; the front ones at 2 megapixels.
Already available in classic Black and White, E4 Dual and E4g have a price tag of around $150.
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