The design of Sony’s next smartphone, rumored to be the Xperia 1 V, appears to have leaked in unofficial renders published over the weekend by OnLeaks and Green Smartphones. And true to form, the company is doing… nothing too exciting, sticking with the same design as the previous Xperia 1 IV. Squint, and it’s hard to tell the two phones apart, with their vertical camera bumps, squared off edges, and tall aspect-ratio displays.
That doesn’t mean we’re expecting the Xperia 1 V to be identical to last year’s phone. Green Smartphones reports that its ultra-wide camera could be upgraded to use a 48-megapixel sensor (up from 12-megapixels), and there’s also a chance it could ship with 16GB of RAM rather than 12GB. Although the screen is rumored to be the same size at 6.5 inches, the device is reportedly slightly shorter and less wide, suggesting we’re going to see thinner bezels this time around. It’ll also almost certainly use this year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor.
But this is still a very Sony smartphone, which you’ll like either like or be quite bored by. Though one plus for many users: it doesn’t look like the company is dropping the increasingly-rare 3.5mm headphone jack from the design.
The leaked specs suggest that the Xperia 1 V won’t be a major departure from Sony’s previous devices. The company’s market share has dwindled compared to Samsung and its Chinese rivals, but it’s seemingly content to focus on specialist features like the continuous optical zoom lens on last year’s phone or speedy burst photography. These enthusiast features have often been paired with enthusiast pricing, like the eye-watering $1,599 price tag on last year’s Xperia 1 IV.
There’s no word yet on how much the Xperia 1 V could cost, but Green Smartphones reports that we could see an announcement “later this month” ahead of a release this summer. With Mobile World Congress set to take place in Barcelona in just a couple weeks time, it seems safe to expect to hear more from Sony then.
