The design of Sony’s upcoming smartphone, rumored to be the Xperia 1 V, appears to have been leaked in unofficial renders released over the weekend by OnLeaks and green smartphones. And true to form, the company is doing… nothing too exciting, while keeping the same design as the previous Xperia 1 IV. If you squint, it’s hard to tell the two phones apart, with their vertical camera bumps, square edges, and tall aspect ratio displays.
That’s not to say we expect 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 (instead of 12-megapixel), and there’s also a chance it could ship with 16GB of RAM instead of 12GB. Although the screen is rumored to be the same size at 6.5 inches, the device is reported to be slightly shorter and less wide, suggesting that we will see slimmer bezels this time around. It will almost certainly use this year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor as well.
But this is still very sony smartphone, which you will either like or get quite bored. It’s a bonus for many users, though: It doesn’t seem like the company is removing the increasingly rare 3.5mm headphone jack from the design.
Leaked specs suggest that the Xperia 1 V won’t be much of a departure from Sony’s previous devices. The company’s market share has dwindled compared to Samsung and its Chinese rivals, but it’s apparently content to focus on specialized features like the continuous optical zoom lens on last year’s phone or fast burst photography. These enthusiast features have often been paired with enthusiast prices, like last year’s Xperia 1 IV’s jaw-dropping $1,599 price.
It is not yet known 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 scheduled to take place in Barcelona in just a couple of weeks, it seems safe to expect to hear more from Sony then.
