Sony Xperia Z release date, price, features, news and rumours

Ever since, a trickle of leaks has issued forth ahead of the phone’s supposed unveiling at either the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January or Mobile World Congress (MWC) the following month.

Leaks pegged the handset under the company’s Xperia Android brand with the codename ‘Yuga’, but as we’ve got closer to launch a more likely sounding Xperia Z moniker has emerged instead.

So, what should we expect from Sony’s big bid for dominance in the smartphone space? Read on to find out.

Sony Xperia Z release date

Judging by the enormous amount of hype surrounding the Sony Xperia Z, the device (previously codenamed Yuga), is due to launch at CES between January 7 and 10.

Sony's press conference is set for 5PM on the Monday, so keep your eyes peeled on our CES 2013 coverage for the announcement as it happens.

The actual on-sale date will be sometime in March, although the date hasn't yet leaked as gospel.

Sony Xperia Z price

As is the case with most smartphones on the market, the price of the Sony Xperia Z is network-dependent. We do think every manufacturer will be offering it from the start though.

The SIM free price of the Xperia Z has leaked as 19,900 Thai Baht, which translates as around £400.

Sony Xperia Z design

One of the earliest leaks of the Xperia Z suggested a new angle from Sony with regards to materials. Supposedly, the handset will feature a glass back panel embedded into its unibody chassis, following in the footsteps of Google’s Nexus 4 and the older-generation iPhones.

In terms of overall shape the Xperia Z looks similar to Sony’s existing Xperia catalogue, particularly the Xperia T ‘Bond phone’.

It’s angular, sports a thin bezel and black bodywork with silver trim.

Build quality has never been an issue with Sony Xperia phones so we can expect the Xperia Z to be well-made.

It will be larger than any other Xperia phone to date, however, as rumours suggest it’ll have a 5-inch display and from the leaked shots this doesn’t appear to involved any edge-to-edge space-saving trickery.

It’s also worth pointing out the Xperia Z will ditch capacitive control keys on the front of the device, according to leaked shots, instead it’ll use on-screen controls via Android’s interface.

 Sony Xperia Z display

Going into a bit more detail, the 5-inch touchscreen will see Sony sticking with LCD technology and if the rest of the Xperia range is anything to go by we’ll see the Sony Mobile Bravia engine onboard for a substantial visual boost.

It’ll have a 1920x1080 pixel HD resolution with a pixel density of 441 pixels-per-inch (ppi).

By now we’re quite used to Sony having handsets with some of the most impressive displays on the market and we don’t expect that to change with the Xperia Z. Clarity, colour and contrast should all be excellent.

However, we should point out that 5-inch 440ppi displays are supposedly set to become the norm in 2013, admittedly in Sony’s case the Bravia engine does make a difference, but it may be that the Xperia Z will need to distinguish itself in other ways.

Sony Xperia Z hardware

Leaks claim the Xperia Z will be equipped with an ARM Cortex-A9-based Qualcomm APQ8064 quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor chip clocked at 1.5GHz.

It’ll have 28 nanometre semiconductors, 2GB of dual-channel RAM and an Adreno 320 graphics processing unit.

Qualcomm tech is notoriously fast and efficient and this should be more than capable of handling all your app, content and gaming needs.

Again though this sort of setup is going to become a fairly common sight in 2013, so while it’s a welcome chipset choice, don’t expect the Xperia Z to be miles ahead of the competition on performance.