Japanese smartphone manufacturer Sony Mobile has launched the dual-SIM variant of the selfie-centric Xperia C4 in India on Friday. The smartphone has been priced at Rs. 29,490 ($470), and will be available for purchase with immediate effect from both online retailers as well as offline brick and mortar stores. The phone will be offered in three colors – White, Black and Vibrant Mint. The Xperia C4 Dual had been announced in India last month itself, but without the price-tag. On Thursday, there were reports of the phone beginning to ship to retailers worldwide. Coming to the device itself, the main USP of the device is its 5-megapixel wide angle front camera. Sony has been advertising the phone as the “ultimate phone for selfie lovers”, as the front camera on the device comes with Sony’s Exmor RTM for mobile sensor, soft LED flash and HDR. Sony also claims the SteadyShot feature in the phone allows it to compensate for any shaking of the camera. The phone follows up from the last generation Xperia C3, which also had a 5-megapixel front camera.
As for the other hardware specifications of the phone, it features a large 5.5-inch Full HD 1080p display, which is a definite step-up from the last generation Xperia C3, which came with a 5.5-inch 720p display. The device is powered by a Mediatek MT6752 SoC, which comes with an octa-core CPU clocked at 1.7 GHz and a Mali 760 MP2 GPU clocked at 700 Mhz. The device packs 2 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage, which is expandable via a microSD card by up to 128 GB. The device runs Android 5.0 Lollipop, and comes with a 2,600 mAh battery. As for connectivity options, the phone comes with 4G LTE (Bands 1, 3, 7, 8, 28, 40) and 3G HSPA+ connectivity, along with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS navigation and NFC. Sony had recently launched dual-SIM variants of the Xperia E4, E4g and the M4 Aqua smartphones over the past few months in India, all of which have much lower price-tags, even though, the phones also come with significantly reduced specifications as well. With ever increasing competition in the mid-range, it remains to be seen how well consumers in India and indeed the rest of the world receive this device.