Renders show compact midrange smartphone Sony with a different design

Renders have appeared of a new, relatively compact smartphone from Sony. The phone is said to have a 21:9 screen with no bezel at the bottom, but with a large bezel at the top.

Almost all smartphones of recent years have either an equal edge at the top and bottom or the edge at the bottom is thicker. The WinFuture article, which put the renders online, does not say why Sony has chosen to do so. Presumably thinning the bezel at the bottom should make the top of the screen more accessible when used with one hand.

The screen is said to have a diagonal of 5.9″ and a resolution of 2560×1080 pixels. This brings the aspect ratio to 21:9, the same aspect ratio as movies. Many smartphones have aspect ratios between 18:9 and 19.5:9. The XZ4 would also have a 21:9 screen, something Sony would like to refer to as CinemaScope.

The phone in the renders has a screen that is approximately as wide as that of Sony’s Compact smartphones from recent years, at around 5.8cm. They had screens with diagonals of 4.6″ and 5″. The length and bezel at the top make this phone presumably longer than the Compact models: it comes in at around 152x66mm, where the XZ2 Compact is 135x66mm.

The specs of the new device, which WinFuture refers to as XA3, are not high-end: it would have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660-soc, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. That soc is mainly for midrange smartphones. The housing would be plastic. According to the renders, the device has a USB-c port, 3.5 mm jack and fingerprint scanner on the side. Sony could present the phone in just over two weeks at the Mobile World Congress telecom fair in Barcelona. Sony will hold a presentation there on Monday 25 February.