As flagship phones increase in price, attention from consumers is turning towards the increasingly powerful mid-range and super mid-range phones. Sony pioneered the concept of the super mid-range category with the Xperia M4 back in 2015 and carried in on through their Xperia XA line-up. Their Xperia XA3 is set to continue the trend, with CAD renders of the device leaking overnight.
The CAD renders, which are simply 360-degree models built from specs leaked usually by case manufacturers, come courtesy of a partnership between MySmartPrice and Steve Hemmerstoffer, the man behind the @onleaks twitter account.
While the renders show that the design doesn’t differ greatly from Sony’s Xperia XA2, they have managed to trim down the top and bottom bezels of the device while still including a 5.9-inch FullHD+ (2160×1080) resolution 18:9 aspect ratio display. The one big change is that Sony appears to have moved the fingerprint sensor from the rear to the side of the phone, building it into the power button on the right hand side of the phone with a volume rocker and dedicated camera shutter button.
The renders and specs from the leak show a device measuring in a 155.7 x 68.3 x 8.4mm – though the camera bump, which will house a dual-camera array, blows that out to 8.9mm.
The Xperia XA3 will continue to use a USB Type-C port for charging with the port mounted on the bottom of the phone, while those who use wired headphones the 3.5mm headphone jack will be happy to see the port appear on the top of the phone.
Moving into the realms of rumours, the Xperia XA3 is likely to launch with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 AIE octa-core processor, 6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage – with a microSD card slot likely based on Sony’s history. The Xperia XA2 will support all your connectivity needs including dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, 4G VoLTE. As with the Xperia XZ3, Sony will launch the XA3 with Android 9.0 (Pie) on-board.
While Sony has missed the opportunity to announce the phones at IFA, it’s likely that we will be seeing the XA3 (and possibly an XA3 Ultra) announced at CES in January.
