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Sony's Xperia 1 II is its first foray into 5G

The company unveils its new flagship phone, along with the midrange Xperia 10 II.

Katie Collins Senior European Correspondent
Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.
Katie Collins
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Sony's Xperia 1 II.

Sony

Sony isn't letting the cancellation of the  MWC  phone show put a damper on its 2020 phone launch plans. The Japanese tech titan on Monday announced two new phones , including its first 5G device, the Xperia 1 II.

The phone is the successor to last year's Xperia 1 flagship and also marks a change in naming convention for Sony. The company is taking a similar approach to the way it names its cameras by keeping the core name the same and adding a "II" (pronounced "mark 2") to the end to denote the latest iteration.

Sony hopes its camera setup will excite consumers. It allows for high-speed shooting enabled by its continuous-tracking autofocus, even in low-light conditions. Plus, there's a bonus that sets it apart from rivals: The phone comes with 3.5mm headphone jack.

Key specs include:

  • A triple-lens camera (all at 12 megapixels), with an 8-megapixel forward-facing shooter
  • 21:9 6.5-inch 4K HDR OLED display
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G mobile platform
  • 4,000-mAh battery with wireless charging
  • 8GB of RAM and 256GB
  • IP65/68 water resistance
  • Runs on Android 10

The phone will be available in black and purple and will ship in "late spring." No pricing details are available yet.

Sony followed up the announcement of the Xperia 1 II with the unveiling of the midrange Xperia 10 II. Like the 1 II, the camera here also has three lens, although only one has a 12-megapixel sensor (the other two are 8 megapixels each). The phone features a 6-inch 21:9 wide design and an OLED screen with the Triluminos technology that can be found in Sony's Bravia TVs . Other key specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 chip, a 3,600-mAh battery, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.

The Xperia 10 II comes in black and white, ships with Android 10 and will be available in select markets from this spring. Pricing hasn't been released yet.

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