Sony loves to confuse us all with the convoluted names of its phones, so it’s good that there’s a bit more clarity now around the price of one of its upcoming handsets.
The obtusely named Xperia 10 II – that’s said Mark 2, apparently – looks like it’ll cost £320 thanks to a premature retail listing at Clove, which has since been taken down (via GSMArena). That’s up from the £299 first-gen Xperia 10 that we reviewed and found to be a pretty flawed phone.
The listing also said the phone would ship from 15 June, a big clue as to when the phone, and the Xperia 1 II, will go on sale. That’s a big gap between the announcement and launch, just like Sony did last year.
We already know the full specs of the Xperia 10 II after Sony announced its new device sin lieu of Mobile World Congress. It’ll have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 with a 6in 1080p OLED, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage and triple cameras, all running on Android 10. It keeps the 21:9 aspect ratio of the latest Xperia phones too, making it an oddly proportioned phone.
Sony will have had to update a lot to make us like the Xperia 10 II. We’re not convinced it’s going to be great, but still have high hopes for the Xperia 1 II. We reviewed the Xperia 1 and loved it, but it was missing features like wireless charging and a headphone jack. Remarkably the Xperia 1 II is set to bring both of these to the table – one of the first instances of a manufacturer reinstating a headphone jack to a flagship line having first removed it.
While Sony is struggling all around, the flagship for this year is looking promising. If the mid-range £320 Xperia 10 II can improve on last year then it might be worth a look, but with so many great mid-range phones on the market it’s going to be a tough ask.
