Sony Xperia 1 II release date, price, news and features

Sony’s next flagship phone - the sequel to the Xperia 1 - is now official, and it comes with a surprising new name along with 5G tech and new advances under the hood.

The Sony Xperia 1 II (pronounced Mark 2) is a new flagship phone from the company that we expect to see on sale later in 2020, which takes a lot of what made last year’s phone great and looks to improve it further. We had expected the handset to be called the Xperia 2 but is actually called the Xperia 1 II.

We’ve not yet been able to handle the phone at TechRadar, but below we have everything that we’ve learnt so far about the phone.

Sony Xperia 1 II release date and price

Sony hasn’t yet told us the release date or the price of this handse, but we’ve been told it’ll be on sale at some stage during "spring 2020". That means we'll likely see it before the end of June, but an exact date has yet to be made clear.

Sony’s Xperia 1 was announced at a similar time in 2019, but it wasn’t on sale until June so we’d expect a similar release schedule for this handset.

We can use the Xperia 1’s price as a judge of how much the Xperia 1 II will cost too. That phone cost $949 / £849 (roughly AU$1,365), so expect a similarly high flagship price for this sequel handset.

Sony Xperia 1 II design and display

If you’ve seen the Xperia 1, you’ll know a lot of the design details that are here. It’s not a dissimilar looking phone to last year’s handset by any means.

This handset features a 21:9 aspect ratio display, which means the design may be a touch longer than your current handset. It’s designed to look better when playing widescreen content on your phone, but it also makes the phone's screen look elongated compared to other handsets.

It comes with a 6.5-inch display that has a 4K resolution. It’s a HDR OLED panel, and it seems on paper to be a very similar display as to what is included on the Sony Xperia 1.

The company has included a new effect that will allow for 90Hz effect on the screen, but it doesn’t seem to include an actual 90Hz panel. That’s an odd choice given the move toward high frame rate screens from competitors like the OnePlus 7T or Samsung Galaxy S20.

The phone has dimensions of 166 x 72 x 7.9mm, plus it weighs 181 grams.

The design is glass on the front and back - both are protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 6 technology - and it’ll come in either black or purple. There’s a USB-C connector on the bottom of the device, while the top-right hand edge features a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Even though the Xperia 1 dropped the headphone technology, Sony has decided to reintroduce it here for those who like to use wired headsets, and many will rejoice at its re-inclusion as the Galaxy S20 is the first flagship from Samsung to drop the tech.

The phone is also water and dust resistant like recent Sony flagships have been too, so it should be able to survive the odd splash of water or a trip to a sandy beach.

Sony Xperia 1 II camera

The camera is another area where Sony has focused here, and speed is the name of the game.

The camera has three 12MP rear cameras alongside a 3D time of flight sensor that the company claims will offer groundbreaking autofocus technology.

It's using a technology that Sony developed for its Alpha range of cameras, and the aim here is to give you the best shot through stronger auto focus. The tech can complete auto focus and auto exposure calculations at 60 frames per second while the camera itself can take 20 shots in burst mode per second.

We've yet to see this in practice, but Sony claims it improves autofocus for low-light conditions as well as in everyday shooting as well.

On the front of the phone is an 8MP selfie camera, and Sony has yet to explain whether there are any significant improvements for front-facing shots.

Sony Xperia 1 II specs and battery life

Inside the Xperia 1 II is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset, which is one of the very best processors on the market. It’s likely to offer some strong performance and be able to cope with all the tasks that most other top-end phones can do.

It’ll come with 8GB of RAM to keep the phone running. Storage-wise you’ve got 256GB of space to play with here, but it’s also worth noting that there isn’t any option to upgrade that with a microSD card.

5G is one of the big talking points of the Xperia 1 II, and it’ll include the technology here - there’s no 4G variant of this phone. We won’t know how well the 5G tech works on the Sony until we get to try one, but it’s something we’ll be testing at the time of our full review.

Sony has also made some big improvements to the battery on this device by increasing it to 4000mAh on the Xperia 1 II. That may allow for some improved battery life, and there’s also fast-charging here that will allow for up to 50% in 30 minutes. To get those results you’ll have to buy a separate charger though.

This is the first phone from Sony in a while to include wireless charging too. We don’t know much about how well this will work, but we know it’ll be compatible with chargers that work up to 15 watts.