The Sony Xperia Z is an immensely popular phablet that was instrumental in getting Sony to compete with the other major smartphone and phablet manufacturers, Samsung in particular. Now Sony will be building on this positive trend by releasing the Xperia Z Ultra.
As its name suggests, the Sony Xperia Z Utra will be a bigger version of the Sony Xperia Z. According to the news available at this time, the Ultra will have a dedicated camera button and thus it will look more like the Xperia ZR than the Xperia Z. The Xperia ZR has not been released as yet, but according to official news, it will have a 4.55 inch display, in comparison to the 5 inch screen on the Xperia Z. The Xperia Z Ultra, on the other hand, will come with a 6.44 inch screen.
The Ultra will have a 1080p full HD display and it will feature Sony’s new X-Reality technology. This new technology is an upgrade to Sony’s Bravia Engine 2 and according to Sony X-Reality technology will make images look crisper as it fills in any missing pixels in the display.
The new Xperia phablet is expected to come with a 2.2 GHz Snapdragon quad core processor, 16 GB of internal memory storage and 2 GB of RAM. As can be expected, it would be possible to upgrade the internal memory by inserting a microSD card. The graphics processing unit of the Ultra should be an Adreno 330 processor. Surprisingly, it looks that Sony will only include an 8 megapixel camera on the back (the Xperia Z comes with a 13.1 megapixel camera). The front facing camera should support 2.2 megapixels, just like the Xperia Z.
News that Sony was planning to release such a phablet, previously codenamed Togari, was released more than a month ago, as per my other post New Sony Phablets Coming Soon. It is not clear at this point whether the user interface will be the same as that of the Xperia Z. While some rumours said that Sony was going to carry out changes to the user interface, it looks likely that the user interface will not be changed at all.
With regarding to size, the Z Ultra will have dimensions of 179.2 x 92 x 6.5mm (7.1 x 3.6 x 0.26 inches) and will weigh 212g (7.5 oz). Thus the massive smartphone will still be relatively slim and lightweight for a device of these dimensions. According to some rumours, the handset will have a 3,000 mAh battery. However it is not clear at this stage whether the new phablet from Sony will be water and dust resistant, one of the selling points of the Xperia Z.
Sony’s biggest phablet to date should be released with Android version 4.2.2. Rumours suggest that the Sony Xperia Z Ultra will come with a stylus while others say that a stylus will not be included in the box. However leaked pictures of the Ultra suggest that it would also be possible to use any normal pencil with the new Sony phablet. Early pictures of the new gadget suggest that the headphone jack will no longer sit at the top but will be relocated to the side.
Sony is expected to show its new phablet to the world at an event on July 4th. No pricing details are available at this point in time and it is not yet known when the Sony Xperia Z Ultra is expected to hit the shelves.
