Sony Xperia 1 II With 4K OLED Screen Arriving in Malaysia November 2020

Sony’s latest flagship smartphone, the Sony Xperia 1 II, is finally confirmed to be coming to Malaysia. Set to arrive here in November, it’s definitely taking much longer that expected. After all, the high-end smartphone was introduced globally back in February this year.

Nonetheless, the Xperia 1 II does come with a number of intriguing features, such as its sharp 6.5-inch 3840 x 1644 OLED panel with HDR support. That’s right, the Japanese company is retaining the power-hungry 4K screen of its predecessor, along with the tall 21:9 aspect ratio.

In fact, this aspect ratio is similar to the company’s mid-range smartphone, the Xperia 10 II. While the tall screen of the device looks odd at first, it actually improves the ergonomics of the Xperia 10 II; and by extension, the Xperia 1 II right here. It allows the chassis to be narrower than usual, so it’s easier to use either phones with only one hand; something that you cannot say of the majority of smartphones in the market.

Anyway, let’s get back to the Xperia 1 II itself. With such a pixel-dense display, we can’t help but to wonder if it will be able to return good enough battery life. Granted, the 4,000mAh battery of the phone is reasonably big, but we’ll have to wait until we have the device in for review to really get a feel for the battery life.

Like most flagship smartphones in the market now, the Xperia 1 II is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset. Not only will it be able to provide a very good level of performance, it also gives the phone 5G connectivity; practically a feature every flagship smartphone worth its salt support now, even though 5G networks are not widely available yet.

In the camera department, the Xperia 1 II comes with 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 the autofocus performance of the camera, along with a dedicated shutter button on the side of the phone.

Other specifications of the Xperia 1 II include an 8MP f/2.0 front-facing camera, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of internal storage – expandable with a microSD card up to 1TB – a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, an IP65/68 rating, as well as Android 10 out of the box.

The Sony Xperia 1 II is expected to arrive here in Malaysia later this year in November. We’ll find out then exactly how much this flagship smartphone will cost here. As a point of comparison, it retails at $1,200 in the US; that’s about RM5,000. You can register your interest for the Xperia 1 II right here.