Wait...re-imagined?
This week the biggest Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicked off in Las Vegas drawing our attention to latest upgrades from tech giants like LG, Samsung and Sony.
While LG and Samsung are gearing up their high-end smartphones for MWC and for now are ready to show their home appliances such as 85-inch TVs and Smart Refrigerators, Sony took the stage and announced three mid-rangers to its XA portfolio.
New and larger 5.2-inch display and battery capacity improvement to 3,300 mAh are key for this third-generation smartphone. Aluminium framed body packs Android 8.0 out of the box, super wide-angle 8MP selfie camera (120 degree) and a 14nm Snapdragon 630. Memory wise we get 3GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage with microSD slot for expansion.
Full HD display is surrounded by somewhat forgotten already huge top and bottom bezels. Bearing in mind that Xperia XA2 have its fingerprint placed on the rear of the phone and single speaker on the bottom, we’d expect chin and forehead to be slashed by Sony. But manufacturer decided to stick to Sony-esque recognisable design.
Sony, why …?
Hearing “Ultra” in branded smartphone name, we anticipate a bit bigger upgrade step. The Ultra keeps 6-inch screen and almost doubles its power pack from previous 2,700 to 3,580 mAh. New Sony Ultra runs Android Oreo and combines same Snapdragon 630 with 4GB of RAM. Internal storage options are 32 or 64GB. More memory, yey!
Top bezel hides front facing flash and two front cameras. Primary camera is a 16MP shooter with OIS and autofocus, secondary – a 8MP camera with 120-degree field view. Video recording is at 1080p/30fps.
Xperia L2 joins the-more-battery-the-better line focus and sports a 3,300 mAh cell too. Identical processor two the ones mentioned above, however RAM goes back to 3GB. Front camera has a brighter lens than the last generation and shoots at f/2.0 aperture. The L2 model will snap your selfies with fixed focus at a 120-wide angle too.
The money-saver L variant has Android Nougat 7.1.1. under the hood and 5.5- inch LCD. This year it got treated with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor as its other two siblings.
We can wrap these three smartphones by saying same old with a new touch. For the past couple years, Sony was embedding fingerprint readers in phone’s power button on a side. Relocating it tot he rear of a smartphone is something new to Sony range, not to the rest of the market. We hope relocating biometrics sensors isn’t the only upgrade area Sony is planning to impress us in 2018.
2019 was another year of incremental improvements, we saw a small reduction in the bezels and a more budget and mid-range devices taking to more impressive screen displays. Slightly better processor and chipsets. How can they do better in 2020?
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There are 15 standards that apps need to adhere to, the ICO provide detailed information, but here’s a bitesize summary, that outlines the key points to each.
