Xperia XZ4 is the successor of XZ3 and the fifth iteration flagahip in the Sony XZ series. Sony recently launched the XZ3 flagship at IFA 2018 on August 30th with a completely revamped design and pre-installed Android Pie. The XZ4 flagship is expected to make its debut in the last week of February at MWC 2019, according to the usual schedule of Sony.
The Japanese tech Giant may introduce Xperia XZ4 flagship with powerful hardware like Snapdragon 855 Fusion platform, 6 GB Ram, Massive Display and Battery, Dual Rear Camera etc.
The Xperia XZ4 may come with pre-loaded Android Pie operating system with Project Treble support. So Sony XZ4 flagship will provide great user experience in combination of powerful hardware with AI-based Pie OS. Now we roundup the most anticipated fetures of Xperia XZ4.
Editor’s Pick : Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact are getting the Android Pie update soon
Xperia XZ4 Display
It seems the Japanese tech giant decides to increase the Display size by reducing bezel size without increasing body size much. Previously the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Premium flagships arrived with 5.7 and 5.8 inch LCD Displays in 18:9 aspect ratio. The latest flagship, XZ3 sports a massive 6.0 inch OLED display with curvy corners, caching up with the trend. We see there is no reason to deviate from this trend, the next flagahip from Sony may come with the same design and Display with minor refinements.
So XZ4 may come with 6.0-6.2 inch P-OLED Display without Notch in 18:9 aspect ratio and sports 4K resolution. HDR compliant, X-Reality Engine and Triluminos are some of the exclusive features of XZ4 Display. Corning Gorilla Glass 5 acts as Display protection.
Editor’s Pick : Android Pie for Xperia XZ1, XZ2 and XZ Premium
Chipset and Ram
The upcoming flagship from Sony is expected to be powered by Snapdragon 855 Fusion Platform comprising of SD855 chipset and SDX50 modem with 5G capabilities. As the chipset still in development stage under the codename ‘Hana’, we don’t have detailed information about SD855. But we expect the chipset would sport eight custom Kryo cores which can be clocked upto 3 Ghz. Hexagon DSP, Spectra ISP and Adreno GPU are also present in SD855.
Snapdragon 855 is the first chipset from Qualcomm built on 7nm process and the Chipmaker already confirms it. Because of highly efficient 7nm process the power of the chip increases massively. The battery juice consumption also get reduced due to 7nm process. Recently an alleged HTC device powered by SD855 visits Geekbench and scores higher than SD845. As Sony would have received the early samples of SD855, the benchmark details of XZ4 will be revealed soon.
Dedicated NPU
Recently reports claim that the next flagship chipset from Qualcomm would feature a dedicated NPU (Neural Processing Unit) which aids in machine-learning functions. Huawei recently take the leap with the Kirin 970 chipset which includes an NPU for AI functions. Previously, Google activated the ARcore Neural processing chip in the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL devices with the Android 8.1 update which helps to apply AI-powered optimization to Camera.
However, this time as the SD855 chipset coming with on-board Dedicated NPU, there is no need for an external Neural chip. So Sony may optimize the NPU specially to make it useful for faster Image processing and other countless AI-powered applications in Xperia XZ4. Full details about the NPU will be revealed in coming days.
Sony launched XZ2 flagship in 4GB and 6GB Ram variants and XZ2 Premium in 6GB Ram variant only. According to rumours and leaks, XZ3 is coming with 6GB of Ram, so we expect the XZ4 might come in 6GB and 8GB Ram variants.
Camera
Camera is one of the strong point in Sony flagships without a doubt. Thanks, to the recent improvements, the Xperia XZ2 Premium came with dual Rear Camera design with Laser Auto focus and predictive PDAF sensor. Most likely, the Xperia XZ4 flagship too come with same Dual Camera design with small refinements, according to tech experts. Albeit, the XZ3 arrived with single Camera sensor on the rear side, Sony may change the design to Dual camera in the next iteration.
So Sony XZ4 may come with the same 19 MP f/1.8 and 12 MP f/1.6 sensor setup of XZ2 Premium on the rear, accompanied by predictive PDAF sensor, Laser Auto focus and LED flash. The flagship will be able to record 4K video at 30 fps, FHD at 60 fps and 720p at 960 fps super slow motion. The XZ3 may feature 13MP camera sensor with f/2.0 aperture on the front for selfies.
Android 9 Pie
The Japanese tech gaint unveiled the Xperia XZ3 flagship with Android 9 Pie out of the box, so we expect that the next flagship from Sony also come with pre-installed Android 9 Pie and Treble enabled. The Pie OS is associated with many AI powered features to improve user experience a lot. Using on-device machine learning, Android Pie analyze user’s behaviours and show app actions and suggestions accordingly.
The new Gesture-based interface with horizontal app slider provide a whole new multitasking experience. Because of Adaptive battery, battery life can be improved upto 30 percent.
Battery
The Xperia XZ2 flagship arrived with 3180 mAh battery while the XZ3 arrived with 3300 mAh battery with Qi Wireless charging support and Quick Charging 3.0 features. So the Sony XZ4 flagship might be powered by 3350 mAh Non-Removable Battery with Quick Charging 4+ support.
Release Date
If Sony announce XZ4 at MWC 2019 following the six month cycle, the shipping of the flagship should start in early-March 2019 in the US and Europe. To the remaining regions, XZ4 flagship may arrive in April 2019.
Price
The Xperia XZ3 is expected to be priced similar to its predecessor, so the price of the flagship may start from $799, according to some rumours. The upcoming flagship from Sony might come with a price tag slightly higher than that of XZ3. So the price of unlocked Xperia XZ4 may start from $850 in the US and £750 in the UK.
Update on 17/11/2018 :
Recently, the chipset which is going to power most of the next year flagships has shown up in benchmarks. The next flagship chipset from Qualcomm scored 362,292 points in Antutu and beats all the other chipsets. Till now, only the Kirin 980 chipset which powers Huawei Mate 20 series is the top scorer in Antutu with 311,000 points. Snapdragon 845 scores around 302,000, so it seems that Snapdragon 8150 is coming with 16 percent more performance than Kirin 980 and up to 20 percent performance boost than its predecessor. However, as these are preliminary tests only and Sony may further optimize the chipset in Xperia XZ4, we can anticipate much better scores.
Update on 5/12/2018 :
On the first day of Snapdragon summit at Hawaii, USA, Qualcomm confirms that the next flagship chipset to be named as Snapdragon 855 and revealed some of the key features of the chipset. The chipst comes with 5G support through X50 5G modem and X24 LTE Modem which gives download speeds upto 2Gbps. The chip maker also offers SD855 without X50 modem sporting only X24 LTE modem, so OEMs can implement the required one in thier flagships.
According to Qualcomm, the new flagship chipset built on 7nm process offers 3x improvement in overall performance and 2x improvement in AI performance compared to present flagship chipsets. More details about the SD855 chipset will be revealed in coming hours.
Update on 31/12/2018 :
According to the render in the video created by TechConfigurations, Sony Xperia XZ4 is coming with 21:9 aspect OLED Display which is really sleek and also provides good hand grip. The video also shows triple camera design on the rear side of the device which is the first from Sony.
The video shows Xperia XZ4 in four color variants : Black, Blue, Brick Red and Purple. As Sony is planning to announce the Xperia XZ4 at MWC 2019 in February, more details will be revealed in coming days.
We will update this post soon with more details about the Xperia XZ4 flagship.
