It’s been a fair while since a Sony phone made much of a splash in the hyper-competitive smartphone world, but nonetheless the mobile maker is apparently gearing up to release a staggering five new Xperia phones at Mobile World Congress in February.
Sony is always at the big Barcelona phone show, and usually has a handset or two to show off – but none of its recent launches have set the world on fire (not a dig at the Note 7). You’d think the solution to flagging sales would be to zero in on what consumers really want and work hard on delivering one phone that nails it – but according to Slashgear, Sony is going in the other direction entirely. Perhaps the strategy is to throw loads of phones at the market and see what sticks, but that’s an expensive way to learn.
We don’t have a great deal of detail on the supposed new phones, mostly just codenames and some rumoured specs. It sounds like the handsets will run the full gauntlet from top-end to budget, with the phone codenamed ‘Yoshino’ representing the flagship. The information originally appeared as an exclusive on Georgian site Review.ge, which claims the Yoshino will pack a 5.5-inch 4K screen, the Snapdragon 835 chipset and either 4GB or 6GB of RAM. The lowest-end phone, codenamed Mineo, has no specs yet but will apparently cost just $US350.
Whether any of this comes to fruition remains to be seen next month, but with many manufacturers struggling to sell one line of phones, we’re interested to see how Sony’s planning to succeed with five. [Slashgear]
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.