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By published 13 June 22
A small phone with big specs
We’d thought there might not be a Sony Xperia 5 IV, given that the phone wasn’t announced alongside the Sony Xperia 1 IV, but a new leak suggests Sony’s compact flagship line will continue after all.
Sumahodigest (opens in new tab) has spotted a post on Weibo (opens in new tab) (a Chinese social network) which contains a partial specs list for the Sony Xperia 5 IV. The presence of such a specs list suggests the phone is still in the works, and the content of the list is promising.
Apparently the Xperia 5 IV has the same cameras as the Sony Xperia 1 IV, meaning a 12MP wide snapper, a 12MP ultrawide one and – perhaps most excitingly – a 12MP telephoto one, which can seamlessly move between 85mm and 125mm optical zoom ranges. That equates to between 3.5x and 5.2x zoom relative to the focal length of the main lens.
On top of that, the Sony Xperia 5 IV is also said to come in both 8GB and 12GB RAM configurations – with the latter being 4GB more than you can get in the Sony Xperia 5 III, and a match for the Xperia 1 IV.
The battery could match the Xperia 1 IV too at 5,000mAh, and it apparently supports wireless charging, which the previous model doesn’t.
A Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset is also listed, as is a 6.1-inch screen, and a choice of 128GB or 256GB of storage. Interestingly, Android 13 is mentioned as well, but that has a question mark next to it, so presumably the source isn’t sure of that.
We’d take all of this with a helping of salt, especially as the source hasn’t leaked anything in the past, so they don’t have a track record yet. Another red flag is that this post has seemingly been deleted – however they’ve made another post saying that the Sony Xperia 5 IV does exist, but that another Sony phone will probably be released before it.
Assuming this source is right in saying that another Sony phone will land before the Xperia 5 IV, that could mean the Xperia 5 IV is quite a long way off from being launched.
The mention of it possibly running Android 13 is another sign of that, as this software isn’t expected to be available before October. Similarly, in the specs list they mentioned that the Xperia 5 IV is “close to the start of production”.
All of which suggests we’ll be waiting quite a few months for it. In fact, given that the Sony Xperia 5 III didn’t hit US stores until January of this year, we might even be waiting until early 2023. But that’s just speculation.
The Sony Xperia 5 IV could be worth the wait though, as it sounds like its specs list is very similar to that of the Xperia 1 IV, yet if past form is anything to go by it will almost certainly cost a fair bit less, which is important, as the Xperia 1 IV is prohibitively expensive.
If Sony also manages to pack in a lot of the same creative tools here as it has on its top-end flagship, then the Xperia 5 IV could be its most exciting phone in a while.
Via NotebookCheck (opens in new tab)
James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.
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