The Xperia Z3 and Xperia Z3 Compact was both excellent handsets, but Sony's release of both the Z2 and Z3 handsets last year was confusing for consumers and didn't leave much time for significant updates between them. Now we have yet another Sony flagship approaching, most likely to be called the Sony Xperia Z4, and hopefully a compact version soon after too. Here we've summarised all the current news, leaks and rumours to date, so you can judge whether to buy a Samsung Galaxy S6 in April, or hold out for Sony's handsets later in the year.
Sony Xperia Z4 release date
Sony's announcement times have varied over the years, the Xperia Z2 was launched at MWC last year, with the Z3 following six months later. Based on that we were hopeful of an March MWC annoucnement, but with no press conference planned for the event, that is certainly not going to happen now.
Despite that dissapointment, the phone shouldn't be too far off release. Its been shown that the Z4 has already been approved by the Japanese Internal Affairs and Communication Ministry, which oversees telecommunications in Japan alongside other parts of the Japanese government. According to PhoneArena it will be available on Japanese networks NTT, DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank. All carrier versions will support Voice-over-LTE, too.
According to XperiaBlog, Sony is supposedly concentrating on a summer release window. So we may well have wait until then for a UK release.
Sony Xperia Z4 design
While there are plenty of curved concept designs for the Xperia Z4 floating around the internet, the latest information seems to suggest Sony will be sticking with its traditional flat screen design for the time being. The first leaked image of the phone came courtesy of Sony itself, after Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton's email was hacked at the end of last year.
The reason why it ended up in the Sony Pictures CEO's inbox was allegedly because he was in discussions with Sony Mobile to have it included as a bit of product placement in the upcoming James Bond film, Spectre. Sony has had a long history of using its products in James Bond films (most notably the Sony Xperia T in Skyfall), so a potential placement of the Xperia Z4 isn't that surprising. It's still unclear whether the image features the final design or merely a prototype, but it does suggest the Xperia Z4 will look very similar to the Z3.
Sony Xperia Z4 specs
The design may be similar, but at least the Z4 will have a significant spec upgrade. According to GSM Arena, the phone will be keeping its predecessor's 5.2in display, but may be getting a 2,560x1,440 resolution to match other phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, LG G3 and Nexus 6. As expected, the phone will also be IP68 certified, which means the phone will be dust proof and water resistant up to 1m for up to 30 minutes. Admittedly, we were hoping Sony might have changed the size of the phone this time round, but at least the phone will reportedly be running Android 5.0 Lollipop instead of Android 4.4 KitKat.
GSM Arena also suggest the phone will be powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chip, which is made up of a quad-core 1.5GHz Coretex-A53 and a quad-core 2.0GHz Cortex-A57, and 4GB of RAM. It will also come with either 32GB or 64GB of internal storage, but you'll be able to expand that up to 128GB with a microSD card.
Those specs look to be backed up by a recent leak of specs from a Sony Xperia handset on Geekbench. The handset, just named '78YB16RC98PW62B1' is listed as having an MSM8994 chipset, which is Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, and is reported to be running at 1.55GHz, roughly the same speed as rumoured for the handset's Cortex-A53 cores, with the expected 8 cores listed in the specs.
The benchmark scores themselves look a little low however, with single- and multi-core scores of 1,196 and 3,576 respectively. That's well behind the scores we've seen leaker from the Samsung Galaxy S6. It may have been that the Z4 was being benchmarked at just the lower clock speed of its low-power cores, but if not Sony (and Qualcomm) could find themselves significantly behind in terms of processing power.
Sony Xperia Z4 camera
The Xperia Z3 had one of the best cameras that we've seen in a smartphone thanks to its excellent 20.7-megapixel sensor. For the Z3, it appears so though Sony is sticking to the same resolution, but we could get a brand new sensor: the Exmor RS IMX230. This CMOS sensor is, according to Sony, the first mobile sensor to have "onboard image plane phase detection AF signal processing function to achieve excellent focus tracking of fast-moving subjects". High dynamic range, 4K video shooting and a new image process all combine to make this one of the most exciting-sounding camera sensors. Let's hope that Sony delivers the goods.
Sony Xperia Z4 price
There have been no leaks about the expected price, although we can make a good guess. The Z3 cost £549 SIM-free when it launched, so we're expecting the Z4 to cost the same in the UK. That would mean that the excellent Z3 will get a big price drop, meaning that you'll most likely be able to buy a six-month-old phone for a bargain price.