The Sony Xperia Z was released a mere 3 months ago yet its days as Sony’s flagship device are now numbered. The new rumored Xperia A has just passed FCC testing under the codename SO-04E and will be released as part of the summer lineup of Japan’s NTT DoCoMo carrier. The new phone will share a lot of features with its predecessors the Xperia Z and ZL so don’t expect a design revolution from Sony.
As shown in the picture above, the new Xperia A shares a similar external design as the Z and ZL, however the back panel of the new phone won’t be glass like the Xperia Z judging from the FCC report. The new phone will have a removable 2300 mAh battery, which is slightly smaller than the 2,400 mAh unit that comes built into the Xperia Z and ZL, but given the ability to carry around a second battery or have use a larger aftermarket one should make up for the missing 100 mAh which should make next to no difference in real life usage. Despite having a removable battery the new phone will keep the dust and waterproof design that Sony marketed to death in its previous flagships.
As for the internals of the device there has not been a lot details, however it appears as though the hardware will be similar to the Xperia Z. This includes a 13 megapixel camera that has earned praises from across the board and is probably the best camera to be fitted on a smartphone yet. The phone will also come with 4G LTE and a 1080p Full HD display; however we don’t know if it will still be using the TFT panel in the Xperia Z which, while brilliant, was not up to scratch when compared to the displays on the HTC Butterfly and other 1080p display phones. There has also been a lack of information concerning the processor that will be powering the device, chances are it will be Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC because of the ease of integrating LTE into a device using that processor. Hopefully the processor will be bumped up from a Snapdragon S4 to a Snapdragon 600, however it does face a similar issue with the Xperia Z where the phone is released near the end of the life cycle of the processor because the new Snapdragon 800s won’t even enter production until the end of May while this phone will probably be announced on the 15th of May.
What do you think about Sony releasing a new flagship only 3 months after the release of their previous one?
Source:FCC