Sony Xperia Z1 (Honami) officially announced, 20MP waterproof cameraphone

Sony Xperia Z1 cover 1.jpg

After months of leaks and rumours, the Sony Xperia Z1 or previously known as Honami finally gets officially announced. Combining the best of Sony according to the One Sony initiative it puts in an awesome 20.7MP, F2.0 aperture 27mm wide-angle G Lens equipped camera sensor into a thin yet stylish glass covered smartphone. The smartphone itself is IP58 waterproof and features the now familiar OmniBalance design. The main focus of the Z1 remains the camera though as it packs in 3x clear zoom, a BIONZ image processor, super fast shutter to capture time and a dedicated camera shutter button. Other tech specs are equally impressive as it offers a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB storage, up to 64GB microSD, Android 4.2 and a 3000 mAh battery. According to Sony, the cameraphone has up to 14 hours talk time and also utilizes pixel-binning like the Lumia 1020. This pixel-binning seems to offer more sharpness and clarity rather than Lytro-like after zoom effects.

Sony Xperia Z1.jpg

Since it is a Sony, the 5-inch display gets the full Triluminous and Bravia technology treatment for 1080 x 1920 pixel Full HD playback. At 8.5mm thinness and just 170g it is super thin and lightweight, but we feel it is a bit heavy for it's size, perhaps due to all the tempered glass. Nothing really new in the software department except for some features like the Info Eye which lets you snap a picture and the app will provide any related information about the object you shot. The Sony Xperia Z should be available soon, with Malaysia release dates estimated in the first week of October 2013. Unfortunately, no pricing was available just yet. One downside that we could note is that there wasn't any xenon flash but thankfully, there is at least LED flash which is much better than nothing. Sony claims that the Z1 will be able to handle low-light images without flash (perhaps due to the pixel-binning) but we'll see when it gets here. For more information check out the Sony blog.

Sony Xperia Z1 Specs & Price >