While it did not bring a high-end flagship smartphone to Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, Sony definitely had something to show there and has announced its newest flagship tablet, the Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet.
Being a successor of the Xperia Z2 Tablet, since Sony decided to skip the Xperia Z3 but rather launched the 8-inch Xperia Z3 Compact as a direct competitor to iPad Mini, the new Xperia Z4 Tablet retains the design of the Xperia Tablet lineup but adds a few novelties.
The Xperia Z4 Tablet is still based on a 10.1-inch IPS 2560x1600 resolution display, adding up to 300ppi of density, with Sony's own Triluminos technology and X-Reality Mobile engine. In order to cope with that resolution and give it a bit more performance, Sony decided to use Qualcomm latest available Snapdragon SoC, the well known Snapdragon 810. Based on an octa-core design with four Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 2.0GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.5GHz as well as Adreno 430 GPU and 3GB of RAM, the new Xperia Z4 tablet should be quite a performer.
While it did retain the overall design of the Xperia Tablet lineup, Sony made quite a few minor adjustments so the new Xperia is smaller, lighter and thinner, compared to the Xperia Z2 Tablet. With dimensions set at 254x167x6.1mm and weighing in at 389g, Sony's Xperia Z4 Tablet is pushing its way into Apple iPad Air territory.
The rest of the specifications for the Xperia Z4 Tablet include 32GB of internal storage expandable via microSD card slot, rear 8-megapixel Sony ExmorRS camera and 5.1-megapixel wide-angle front one, stereo speakers, usual connectivity options including 3G/LTE, Bluetooth 4.1, 802.11ac and NFC, 6000mAh battery as well as IP68-certification, which means it is both dust and water proof. It runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop OS and will be available with a wide choice of new accessories including BKB50 Bluetooth Keyboard, SRC32 tablet cover and BSP60 Bluetooth Speaker.
The global availability of the Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet is expected in June and as expected it will be available in white and black color options and LTE and WiFi-only versions. Unfortunately, Sony did not reveal any details regarding the price.