This is Sony’s answer to Galaxy S9

Sony has finally decided to change its smartphones’ design. Even though the mobile industry had already gone on the bezel-less phones track, Sony persistently relied on old design even for flagships. It is true that Sony has made some of the ugliest looking smartphones in the industry, but now it has finally changed the way it looks at smartphones design.

After a wave of rumors that Sony is going to do a miracle at MWC, the company has finally launched two new flagships models called Sony Xperia XZ2, the large one and Xperia XZ2 Compact in a smaller size, at MWC in Barcelona. Though Sony has successfully reduced the bezels on both smartphone and introduced a larger immersive display, yet the back design still appears to be strange.

Both devices feature an “Ambient Flow” design and 2.5D Gorilla Glass 5 fronts. The fingerprint reader is now mounted on the back of both devices. Meanwhile, the back of the bigger one is also Gorilla Glass 5, making for an interesting reflective, but quite slippery and fingerprint-friendly surface.

Sony Xperia XZ2 comes with a 5.7-inch, FHD+ (2160 x 1080) display and has a 2:1 aspect ratio, while the Compact one has a 5-inch display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. Both devices feature a Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 chipset, paired here with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to 400GB with the help of a microSD card.

Xperia XZ2 and Xperia XZ2 Compact, both run on Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. Where the Xperia XZ2 features a 3180mAh battery, the Compact one does have a smaller 2870mAh battery. Both of the phones feature fast charging based on Quick Charge 3.0, with the bigger XZ2 also supporting Qi wireless charging.

As far as the cameras are concerned both phones feature a 19MP Motion Eye sensor around back, a modest 5-megapixel camera sits above the screen. Smartphone videographers can now shoot 960FPS, super-slow-motion video in full HD. The XZ2 can capture 4K HDR video as well. The camera has a 3D scan feature which gets a bonus point for being slightly less creepy than the Galaxy S9‘s AR emoji.

The smartphones will go on sale next month with a price tag of $950 for Xperia XZ2 and the Compact one will cost $750 approximately. It is good to finally see a redesigned look, but there’s little that makes Sony stand out versus the Galaxy S9.

Images: Cnet and The Verge