Earlier this week, Sony announced the Xperia X, XA, and X Performance, but there wasn’t any indication that an Xperia Z was right around the corner.
It’s a bit of a strange deal, considering Sony has had no qualms about releasing new Xperia Z flagships as quickly as they could in the past. The first Z-series device was launched in 2013, and there has been five successors to that device leading up to the Z5’s release at the end of 2015.
But, according to a report from uSwitch, and citing a senior product marketing manager from Sony, the Z5 is apparently the last of the Z series for Sony moving forward.
The lack of an Xperia Z flagship from Sony at Mobile World Congress wasn’t a mistake, as apparently Sony plans on focusing on the newly-minted X series. But, Sony isn’t necessarily done with flagships. For all intents and purposes, the X Performance is indeed a high-end smartphone, with 3GB of RAM, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor under the hood, an upgraded camera, and it’s even running Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The display, though, is only a 1080p panel, giving it a slight disadvantage in this area when compared to Samsung’s or LG’s newest flagships.
So, effectively, Sony is just dropping the Z naming scheme, and shifting its attention to the X series instead. Unfortunately for the rest of us, why exactly Sony decided to do this is unknown.
What do you think of the decision?
[via Engadget; uSwitch]