A new device called the Sony Pikachu has turned up on GFXBench – and no, you didn’t read that wrong. The discovery follows hot on the heels of reported leaks of another Sony device, the Sony Xperia XA. There are no real clues as to whether the two are connected, but it is interesting timing for a new device from the company to show up on a benchmark. The earliest results for the device are listed on GFXBench as of February 11, with tests also run several times on February 13.
While the name Sony has chosen for the device may be something of a mystery – especially considering the long-running rivalry between Sony and another company more often associated with the name “Pikachu” – the device itself does actually look to be a very solid mid-range phone. For starters, it comes with Sony’s version of Android 7.0 (Nougat) right out of the box. On the memory front, Sony Pikachu has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It is also listed as packing in a 2.3GHz octa-core processor and a dual-core ARM-based Mali-T880 GPU, which means that the device will be fueled by the MediaTek Helio P20 (MT6757) SoC. The screen resolution is shown as 1280 x 720, with a full 5 inches of screen real estate and five-finger gesture support. Just above the screen, sits an 8-megapixel front camera. On the back, the phone listed to have a 21-megapixel shooter featuring autofocus, face detection, flash, HDR mode and touch-to-focus. Sony has made a lot of headway in mobile cameras recently, but the timing of this benchmark makes it unlikely that the newest camera technology is to be found in this device. Finally, the Sony Pikachu is also listed as having the features users expected with any modern Android device such as accelerometers, GPS, Bluetooth, a compass, a light sensor, NFC, a proximity sensor, and a Wi-Fi radio.
The arrival of the Sony Pikachu on GFXBench is not entirely surprising, as previously unheard-of devices pop up on similar sites with some frequency. However, there is no telling if this is at all related to any of the leaks about Sony devices that have been coming up recently.
