TOKYO: Sony has finally launched the Xperia Z4 in a press release, ending months of rumours that the smartphone would arrive in the second half of 2015.
The Xperia Z4 features a similar design to previous Xperia smartphones, with thinner bezels this year. It is still IP5 and IP8 certified for water and IP6 certified for dust, meaning it should last for 30 minutes in shallow water, although Sony doesn’t recommend dunking.
It still features a 5.2-inch 1080p display, a little outdated given the current 2K display trend. Sony and HTC have both been the most conservative when it comes to pixels, holding off on 1080p in 2013, and holding off 2K on both the One M9 and Xperia Z4.
Internally the Xperia Z4 does not hold back, it features an octa-core Snapdragon 810, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of onboard storage (with 128GB of microSD card storage) and a 20.7-megapixel rear camera on the back.
It features a 5.1-megapixel sensor on the front of the device and 2930mAh battery. The battery life should be anywhere between 8 to 14 hours, depending on usage – we’ll have to wait until Sony sends out smartphones before we can give a firm estimate.
Software wise, the Xperia Z4 comes with Android Lollipop 5.0 preinstalled, running on top of Sony’s own Xperia UI. Sony’s user interface for Android has never been terrible, but given the advances on TouchWiz and Sense this year, we were hoping for some changes.
It is one of the quietest launches in recent memory, with no press conference scheduled beforehand to discuss some of the new features. That might be due to the Xperia Z4 not having that many new features to discuss, in many ways the only new things are specifications and even then there is nothing we haven’t seen before.
Sony has not discussed pricing, but the Xperia Z4 will release in Japan later this summer. We expect it will launch in other regions later in the year, perhaps leading to the yearly launch date for the Xperia lineup from now on, instead of six months.
