Sony announces super slow-mo Xperia XZ Premium
Sony's Xperia XZ Premium can shoot video very slowly indeed, but not for long.
At Mobile World Congress 2017, as widely rumoured beforehand, Sony has announced its new flagship Android device, the Sony Xperia XZ Premium.
Coming hot on the heels of the generally excellent Sony Xperia XZ the Xperia XZ Premium ups the ante by including the slow motion camera sensor that Sony announced just before Mobile World Congress.
The Xperia XZ Premium has a 19MP sensor with a claimed 20% improvement in low light performance, as well as a new technology that Sony calls "Motion Eye". This offsets storage and processing directly to the camera module, allowing for the slow motion effect at up to 960 frames per second. Rather predictably that effect is a real memory hog, so it only captures for 0.2 seconds at a time. At that frame rate, however, your 0.2 seconds of action stretches out over a leisurely 6 seconds of video playback.
The Xperia XZ Premium also sports a 4K HDR compatible display, with Sony noting that it was directly compatible with titles streamed in 4K HDR from Amazon Prime Video. Sony’s long pitched hard at offering high quality screens, so for a phone with a "premium" suffix, it’s great to see some significant improvement here.
Sony so far stands out at Mobile World Congress for being the first vendor to specifically announce a handset running on Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 835 processor. Samsung has secured the first run availability for the new SoC.
That means we can expect to see the Xperia XZ Premium hit the market some time after the Samsung Galaxy S8 handset, with Sony representatives announcing at MWC that they expect to launch in “late Spring”. That’s no particular guarantee that we’ll see the phone in Australia in that timeframe, which would equate to late May.
Sony also announced two other new Xperia X series phones in the Xperia XA1 and XA2 Ultra. They’re distinctly more mid-range devices running on MediaTek helio P20 octa-core processors, with the XA1 offering up a 5 inch 720p display while its larger sibling sports a 6 inch 1080p display. Both phones feature 23MP rear cameras, which is an impressive bump for what are otherwise midrange devices.
Sony hasn’t announced pricing or precise availability for any of the new Xperia phones announced today. Stay tuned for our hands-on impressions of the Xperia XZ Premium phone.
| Sony | Xperia XZ Premium |
|---|---|
| Display | 5.5in |
| Resolution | 3,840 x 2,160 |
| ppi | 806ppi |
| Software | Android 7.1 |
| Storage | 64GB |
| RAM | 4GB |
| Battery | 3230mAh |
| Front Camera | 13MP |
| Rear Camera | 19MP |
| Processor | Snapdragon 835 |
| Size | 140.7 x156 x 77 x 7.9 mm |
| Weight | 195g |
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