Sony’s latest flagships have yet to make any appearance on a major US mobile carrier, but that may soon change if this latest leak from @evleaks proves to be true. In a pair of tweets sent out by the famous mobile device leaker, we’ve gotten a glimpse of both the phone and the specs of the device in one fell swoop, making this mystery less of one in a short matter of hours. While T-Mobile’s CES press conference isn’t scheduled to happen until Wednesday, we might just have a preview of one of the big things they are going to announce: The Sony Xperia Z1s. Yes that’s right, the Xperia Z1 Mini, also known as the Z1f in Japan, looks to finally make its way over the ocean and onto US shores. The Z1s is a smaller version of the Xperia Z1 without any internal hardware compromises as most mini versions of popular phones usually have. The only difference here would be the size of the device, which is only moderately larger than an iPhone 5/5s, and features a 720p 4.3″ screen instead of the 1080p 5″ screen the Xperia Z1 has.
Also while this isn’t the next supercharged iteration as the “s” in the name might make it seem, it’s still a top of the line device. We’re talking the same quad-core 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 (MSM8974) that powers high-performance phones like the Nexus 5, Galaxy Note 3 and LG G2. That’s an incredibly powerful chipset, especially since this is only a 720p phone, meaning you’ll get significant performance increases over devices that run the same chipset but at 1080p. It’s also packed with the same 20.7 megapixel shooter on the back of the phone, as well as the full 2 megapixel camera on the front. 2GB of RAM will keep your multi-tasking near-instant, and 16GB of internal storage is likely plenty for most users. The Xperia Z1s is powered by a 2300mAh battery, which is the same capacity as many bigger flagship devices such as the Galaxy S4 and HTC One. Last but not least it runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean which is unfortunate, but Sony’s upgrade plans have been solid so far, so there’s no reason to think that this won’t get upgraded to Android 4.4 KitKat in the near future.
We’ve heard about the Xperia Z1 and Z1s making its way to T-Mobile for a while now but haven’t seen anything materialize. Hopefully this does actually get announced at T-Mobile’s press conference on Wednesday and it’s not just another smoke and mirror game for those hungry for a Sony phone in the US.