With smartphones increasing to 5-inches as a standard, it seems that the new trend is to create devices that are slightly smaller and offer a “Mini” experience. Which is somewhat ironic as 4.3-inch used to be the standard for smartphones. Nevertheless, we’ve seen the Galaxy S4 Mini, the HTC One Mini, along with similar devices. Now, it looks like Sony is about to release their very own “Mini”. We know that such a phone exists as it’s available from NTT DoCoMo in Japan, in a variety of very nice looking colors.
In Japan, this smaller version of the Xperia Z1 is known as the Xperia Z1 f and just as we thought it would when hearing about the “Honami mini”, it features the same specs as its larger brother. That makes for a device that is easily the most powerful 4.3-inch smartphone on the market and also one of the few that features a premium build and design. You can take a look at the specs below:
- 4.3-inch 1280 x 720 Display
- Quad-Core Snapdragon 800 at 2.2 Ghz
- 2GB of RAM
- 16GB of Storage
- MicroSD Slot
- 20.7 Megapixel “G” Lens rear-facing camera, with 2.2 Megapixel front-facing camera
- Android 4.2
- 2,300 mAh
So, as you can see, these are pretty great specs for such a small device. There’s word that this device might make its way out of Japan and come West, as we saw in an earlier leak from @evleaks. Now, a new image – pictured above – has apparently surfaced on Sony’s own website by accident. The device looks like a smaller Z1 and thanks to the positioning of the front-facing camera, it lines up nicely with the earlier leaked image.
Sony has an event planned for November 12th which could be a sign that the Xperia Z1S is about to be launched in the West. This time of year would be a great time to launch and thanks to its size, the Z1S would do well. However, Sony have long struggled to get their devices on sale in the US and have literally zero presence in brick and mortar carrier stores. Being able to buy the device unlocked from their own website is one thing but, they really need to step things up if they hope to break into the US. After all, the way things are going for HTC, they may be a spot opening up.