Sony’s returning to the high end of Australia’s smartphone market with the sleek new Xperia XZ Premium, available direct from Sony and from Optus, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone from today, with Telstra and retail channels to follow.
Launched at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, the XZ Premium brings major advances in camera technology, performance and design with a 19MP intelligent camera that can shoot bursts of super-slow-motion, a 4K HDR screen and the latest Snapdragon 835 with 4GB RAM wrapped up in a glass body with super reflective Luminous Chrome and Deep Sea Black finishes. Sony says it’s “the true masterpiece”, and it certainly looks the part.
The real star of the show is the 5.5-inch 4K HDR screen. This isn’t Sony’s first time at the 4K rodeo, with the addition of HDR support a clear advance over the older Z5 Premium. This time around Sony is ready to get content in your hands too, with external support for 4K content coming from Netflix and Amazon – if your connection can support it.
There’s also huge focus on the new Motion Eye camera, which adds RAM in the sensor so it can buffer information can pull off some impressive tricks. The new predictive shot feature is always watching your subject and offers shots from the moments before you hit the shutter button in case you missed the action – invaluable for those of us with kids or pets. The XZ Premium’s front camera is a 13MP sensor with a 22mm wide angle lens sporting an f/2.0 aperture.
Sony’s highlighting the phone’s ability to shoot super slow motion video at 960fps. It does this for a burst of about 0.2s which, played back at normal speed, lasts a few seconds and can make your videos look WAY more epic and impressive. To demonstrate the effect, Sony supplied some appropriate subjects at this morning’s launch event – a knife juggler and dancer. You can check out the examples below:
The camera also supports longer bursts of slow-motion with Sony’s more standard slow-motion dial interface, can shoot 4K video if you’re so inclined.
With Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835, you can expect the XZ Premium to be slick, smooth and fast. The phone comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and support for MicroSD cards up to 256GB. It’s also packing a USB-C port at the bottom, Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 and Sony’s Qnovo technology to preserve your battery. Finally, there’s IP65/68 dust+water resistance and a large 3,230 mAh battery, NFC and now-standard support for Sony’s PS4 Remote Play.
Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium is available in Deep Sea Black on contract from Optus, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone from today. Telstra is holding fire on their launch of the device, but we’ll see the phone show up there eventually. If you want to buy the phone at retail you’ll also get the Luminous Chrome colour option and can buy the phone direct from Sony today or from JB Hi-fi on July 4 (but you can pre-order it today).
Are you going to grab an Xperia XZ Premium as your next smartphone? Tell us in the comments!
I actually bought the phone on the day of release (local Optus store). (for an LCD) screen is amazing! Black row of the navigation buttons is actually black (that’s how good the contrast is). UI is very close to stock AOSP (Nexus/Google phone). It’s ***incredibly fast***, much faster than my Samsung S8!!! I really love the dedicated camera button. Samsung should’ve put their “Bixby” button in the same place where Sony put their camera button and allow for remapping without using any hacks. Stereo speakers on the *front* are also very welcome for media consumption. All in all, it’s a… Read more »
WOW… look at those huge bezels.
In the top real world picture it doesn’t look THAT bad