Sony has announced the Xperia XZ3. It is the first Xperia smartphone with an OLED screen. The 6″ panel has a resolution of 2880×1440 pixels and a ratio of 18:9. The phone also has pressure sensors.
Sony is not the first manufacturer with side pressure sensors. HTC was the first with last year’s U11 smartphone and Google’s Pixel 2 phones also have such sensors. These are sensors on the inside of the housing that detect minute changes. This allows the phone to determine whether users are holding and pressing the phone.
Sony calls the feature Side Sense and uses it for multiple applications. For example, users can start the camera by picking up the phone and rotating it horizontally. With a double tap on the side, users will see a menu of most recently used apps. Side Sense should also make it possible to zoom in when using the phone with one hand. The device measures 158x73x9.9 mm and weighs 193 grams.
The Xperia XZ3 is also the first phone to be announced with Android 9.0 Pie. Other new smartphones to date have run on Android 8.0 or 8.1, including since Google released Android Pie more than three weeks ago. The smartphone has a single 19-megapixel rear camera and a single 13-megapixel front camera with LED flash. The front camera has a 1/3.06″ sensor. The rear camera, like the one in the XZ2, also supports slow-motion video recording at 960fps and 3D scanning for 3D printing. The camera has a 1/2.3″ sensor with 1.22 micron pixels. The lens has an aperture of f/2.0.
The phone has a 3330mAh battery and supports wireless charging. The device runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. Sony provides the XZ3 with 4GB of memory and 64GB of UFS storage. The phone will be released in the Benelux at the beginning of October for a suggested retail price of 799 euros. Sony has not announced any other models. As a result, this spring’s XZ2 Compact remains the most recent Compact version, while the just-released XZ2 Premium remains the most recent 4k model.