What would a week be without a new smartphone rumor hitting the news? Nope it's not Samsung but Sony this time and the lowdown is that the Sony Xperia Z4 is supposedly hitting the market in Japan on April 20.
The rumor claims that the phablet device, given its pretty big display of 5.2 inches, is coming soon; though Sony's been mute on exact market launch.
The timing would sort of make sense since it's been a good two months from Mobile World Congress and all the smartphone and mobile device hype before, during and after the big conference.
The rumor arrives just one week after Sony's Xperia Z3 disappeared from T-Mobile's website after only being on the market for about six months.
So if the Sony Xperia Z4 did drop, it would likely get lots of attention, as there's nothing competing for the media time. Even Samsung's snazzy flagships, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, aren't getting much attention these days and there's even less about LG's impending G4 which is due to hit on April 28.
As Tech Times has been steadily reporting, with the most recent leak news just last week, the Sony Xperia Z4 will reportedly offer up the above stated 5.2-inch display with Full HD or QHD and even maybe two options and run on some hefty CPU internals, including a Snapdragon 801 SoC with four Cortex-A53 cores.
For those selfie lovers (heads up Kim Kardashian), there will be a 20.7 MP primary camera and a 5MP front-face sensor. It will be running on Android Lollipop. The other rumored specs include 4GB RAM, microSD card slot and 32GB/G4GB built-in storage.
Previous leaks, as Tech Times wrote last week, claim the hefty smartphone-tablet device will even feature a set of stereo speakers at the top and bottom of the display, which should make music lovers happy.
The water sports crowd may be happy if rumors regarding submersion prove correct. Supposedly the Xperia Z4 can survive being dropped in about 5 feet of water for up to 30 minutes. How many other smartphones can make or support that claim?
Since Sony didn't have the Xperia Z4 ready for MWC or even try to piggy back on the media swell of Samsung's Galaxy handset debuts, some reports claim there's a lot of internal happenings regarding Sony's mobile device strategy and that the Xperia Z4 may be its last big flagship move in the smartphone market.
Right now Sony only holds about two percent market share and is way down, like tenth, on the list of the top 10 competing in the smartphone marketplace.
Yet as Tech Times also reported there has been optimistic word from Sony's Mobile UK unit, but then again it's from the marketing department after all.
"Sony Mobile is here to say, we are absolutely going to focus on delivering profitable growth," Benelux Catherine Cherry, Sony marketing director, recently told reporters.
