The Indian division of Sony Mobile launched two new Android mid-rangers in the South Asian country in the form of the Xperia R1 and Xperia R1 Plus. Officially announced earlier today, the smartphone duo is set to go on sale on November 10th and will be available for purchase directly from Sony, in addition to being retailed by a number of the company’s partners throughout India.
The two devices are equipped with a 5.2-inch LCD panel with an HD resolution of 1,280 by 720 pixels amounting to a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9. The display module of the handsets is protected by 2.5D curved glass, with both being powered by the Snapdragon 430, Qualcomm’s mid-range SoC featuring eight cores whose high-performance quad-core cluster is clocked at a maximum operating frequency of 1.5GHz. The Xperia R1 features 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal flash memory, whereas the Xperia R1 Plus comes with double the storage space and 3GB of RAM. The memory of both models is of the Universal Flash Storage variety, though the exact UFS standard has yet to be specified by the Japanese original equipment manufacturer. The Xperia R1 and Xperia R1 Plus both feature dual-SIM capabilities and a dedicated microSD card slot supporting up to 128GB of additional storage.
The newly announced devices run Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box and will be updated to Android 8.0 Oreo in the near future, Sony confirmed. The software found on the pair of handsets is relatively similar to stock Android and comes with a small number of extra features and a minor redesign. The smartphone lineup boasts a 13-megapixel rear camera using Sony’s Exmor sensor with predictive hybrid autofocus support and an LED flash, whereas the regular-sized top bezels of the new devices house an 8-megapixel sensor with the same autofocusing technology. A 3.5mm jack is also part of the package, as is a 2,620mAh non-removable battery, USB Type-C port, and support for 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, and GLONASS. The devices are 146 x 73.2 x 8.89mm in size, weigh 154g, and are offered in Black and Silver variants which can be seen in the gallery below. The Xperia R1 will come with a price tag of Rs. 12,990 ($199) and the Xperia R1 Plus will set you back Rs. 14,990 ($230). Both devices were announced as India exclusives and presumably won’t be officially available outside of the world’s second largest smartphone market.
