We’ve seen many rumors surrounding Sony’s as yet unannounced device, codenamed the Lavender, including some leaked shots purporting to show the device plus details of the specification. The Lavender is set to be another Sony device using a MediaTek System-on-Chip rather than a Qualcomm Snapdragon and is believed to ship with a high quality front facing camera, including a flash, for selfies. And now it appears that the Lavender is the new Sony Xperia C5 Ultra with model designations of E5506 or E5553, thanks to a leaked handbook. Furthermore, the handbook implies that the new C5 Ultra will have very thin side bezels for the main screen but still has buttons on the side, unlike LG’s very thin bezel models, which have their volume and lock buttons on the back. Until the leaked handbook, the C5 Ultra was known as being something of a selfie-centric device but now the rumor mill is picking up on the extremely thin side bezels, which could be a precursor to later models in Sony’s Xperia portfolio.
The manual includes details of some of the device specifications, including the rear camera resolution of 13MP. It also shows the front facing flash but there is no mention of the front camera resolution, but we have seen rumors that this too will be of 13MP in resolution. The 64-bit MediaTek processor will be backed up by 2 GB of RAM and the C5 Ultra will include 16 GB of internal storage, plus a MicroSD card. Sony have given the C5 Ultra a single nano SIM slot. The screen is believed to be 5.5-inch across the diagonal and 1080p resolution, but the manual does not detail this. In terms of specification, then, the C5 Ultra is shaping up to be very much a mid-range device with a couple of key differentiating features – the high resolution front facing camera complete with a flash and the design complete with thin bezels.
We likely do not have long before Sony officially announce the handset and detail the specification of the device. Meanwhile, that the C5 Ultra may have very thin side bezels is exciting as it could mean the next Xperia Z flagship device (likely the Z5) will have a similar, very-thin side bezel design too. However, this is merely speculation at this stage: it is possible that Sony’s renders of the C5 Ultra flatter the side bezels in the device and perhaps the new smartphone (and subsequent Z flagship models) will have a more conventional design.
