In February 2016 Sony confirmed that the Xperia Z lineup is no more, and instead the series has been replaced by the Xperia X lineup which was partly uncovered at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. At the time of announcement the Xperia X series consisted of the Sony Xperia X, Xperia XA, and the Xperia X Performance, all of which have been equipped with 5-inch displays. But with the Sony Xperia Z series being replaced, fans of smartphones with a smaller footprint have been wondering if the Japanese company will also abandon the “Compact” series altogether. The first answer to this riddle was provided by Sony last week, when a mysterious Xperia-branded ‘Compact’ device was listed on the company’s official website, and now, the alleged Sony Xperia X Compact seems to have been spotted in the GFXBench database, rocking a more compact 4.6-inch display.
The mysterious smartphone listed in GFXBench was discovered by Dutch tech blog “Telefoon abonnement”, and while the listing is not accompanied by a nametag or model number, the source claims that this unknown device is none other than the Sony Xperia X Compact in the making. Spec-wise and judging by this new information, the device is equipped with a 4.6-inch display featuring a resolution of 1920 x 1080, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC featuring two Kryo cores clocked at up to 1.6 GHz, and an additional dual-core Kryo-based CPU running at frequencies of up to 2.1 GHz. The CPU is accompanied by an Adreno 530 graphics chip and 4 GB of RAM (3.7 GB listed). Furthermore, the listing reveals that the device should take advantage of 64 GB of on-board storage (53 GB listed), a 16-megapixel main camera with 4K video recording capabilities, autofocus, and face detection, as well as an 8-megapixel front-facing sensor which should deliver great selfie shots. Last but not least and oddly enough, the smartphone is described as running CyanogenMod on top of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, which is quite odd.
Now, the leak is rather vague and doesn’t mention Sony or the smartphone’s nametag / model number, so take the information as is and with a proverbial pinch of salt. But regardless of whether or not these are the exact specifications of the Sony Xperia X Compact, the smartphone was briefly confirmed by Sony last week, and if it is real then chances are that it will be officially introduced during IFA 2016 in Berlin.