The design of Sony’s next smartphone, rumored to be the Xperia 1 V, appears to have been leaked in unofficial renders published this weekend by OnLeaks And Green smartphones. And as it should be, the company isn’t doing anything exciting, sticking to the same design as the previous Xperia 1 IV. Cross-eyed, and it’s hard to tell the two phones apart, with their vertical camera bumps, square bezels, and tall aspect ratio displays.
That doesn’t mean we expect the Xperia 1 V to be identical to last year’s phone. Green smartphones reports that its ultra-wide camera can be upgraded to use a 48-megapixel sensor (instead of 12-megapixels), and there’s also a chance it will come with 16GB of RAM instead of 12GB. While the screen is rumored to be the same size at 6.5 inches, the device is said to be slightly shorter and less wide, suggesting we’ll see thinner bezels this time around. It will also almost certainly use this year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor.
But this is still a very Sony smartphone, which you like or bore you. Although a 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 the Xperia 1 V won’t be a major departure from Sony’s previous devices. The company’s market share has shrunk compared to Samsung and its Chinese rivals, but it seems content to focus on specialist features like the continuous optical zoom on last year’s phone or fast burst photography. These enthusiast features have often been accompanied by enthusiast prices, such as 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, though Green smartphones reports that we could see an announcement “later this month” ahead of a release this summer. With the Mobile World Congress set to take place in Barcelona in a few weeks, it seems safe to expect more from Sony.
