Japanese electronics giant, Sony, announced its Xperia X Performance premium smartphone last February at the Mobile World Congress, but is yet to launch the device anywhere. However, that is about to change pretty soon, as the company has now officially announced that Japanese carrier, Au by KIDDI, will be launching the smartphone on its network next month. Sony is also expected to launch the device in many of its important markets by July. One thing to note is that the Japanese variant of the device, at least the one that will launch on Au by KIDDI, will sport a 2,570 mAh battery, while the global model is expected to come with a 2,700 mAh unit.
While there’s absolutely no explanation from Sony for this rather strange demarcation, many of the other specs remain the same, including the Snapdragon 820 chip, a 1080p display panel, 3 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, Android 6.0 Marshmallow and 32 GB of built-in storage with support for a microSD card. The phone will also support Cat.9 LTE connectivity and sport a fingerprint scanner integrated into the physical power button. Meanwhile, the device will have a 23-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 13-megapixel front-facing selfie-cam. However, in spite of the presence of the powerful chip and the all-new camera module, video recording on the Sony Xperia X Performance will be restricted to just 1080p at 30 fps.
As a reminder, Sony introduced its new Xperia X line of smartphones at the MWC trade show in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year. The lineup consists of three models — the Xperia XA, the Xperia X and the Xperia X Performance. All three smartphones may look fairly similar from the design standpoint, but the hardware included varies significantly from one device to another. While the Xperia XA comes with distinctly entry-level hardware, the Xperia X will likely slot into the mid-range when released. The Xperia X Performance does feature some high-end hardware, but many flagships like the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge from Samsung, the LG G5 from LG Electronics and the HTC 10 from Taiwanese vendor HTC, all feature hardware that’s a notch higher than what the Xperia X Performance brings to the table.