Sony just unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the Sony Xperia 1 II – that’s pronounced Xperia 1 Mark II. Unconventional naming aside, this flagship smartphone improves upon its predecessor in several aspects, though it still largely retain the same design, for better or worse.
That means the Xperia 1 II is still a tall, narrow smartphone with a 21:9 display, which remains to be a 6.5-inch 3840 x 1644 OLED panel with HDR support. That’s right, Sony is still retaining the power-hungry 4K screen, though battery life should see some improvement, thanks to the larger, more practical 4,000mAh cell. Its predecessor only had a 3,330mAh battery.
Speaking of the display, Sony isn’t going down the route of other smartphone makers in implementing a display with a higher refresh rate. Instead, the Xperia 1 II features “Motion Blur Reduction,” which can supposedly match the user experience of 90Hz screens. It’ll be interesting to see how true this is once we have the device in for review.
Sony also added two features that weren’t available on the original Xperia 1: wireless charging and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On top of that, the Xperia 1 II features 5G connectivity too, though this is only the case for Europe; the US market will get a 4G only version of the flagship smartphone, curiously. It remains to be seen if we’ll get the 5G or 4G variant in Malaysia.
Besides that, the Xperia 1 II naturally comes with some performance upgrade, courtesy of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset paired with 8GB of RAM. It also comes with 256GB of internal storage.
In the camera department, the Xperia 1 II feature a triple camera system. It’s made up of a 12MP f/1.7 primary shooter, a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide angle sensor, and a 12MP f/2.4 telephoto lens. There’s also a 3D iToF sensor to improve focus speeds, along with a dedicated camera button on the side of the phone.
One of the headline features of the Xperia 1 II’s camera performance is the ability to take up to 20fps in burst mode – that’s up to 20 images taken in a single second. Sony claims this is a first for a smartphone camera, though we can’t imagine if most consumers will actually find a use out of this feature.
Rounding out the specifications of the Xperia 1 II include an IP65 / IP68 rating, a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, two front-facing speakers, and an 8MP f/2.0 selfie camera.
The Sony Xperia 1 II will be available in Europe from late spring onwards for a steep €1,199 – that comes up to about RM5,500. But do note that VAT is included in that price for European markets, so the Xperia 1 II should cost less in other regions. It remains to be seen if it will be launched in Malaysia though.