Early last week, news spread that Sony was looking to launch another flagship smartphone in 2016 with the model number F833X. The news always felt odd as Sony had gone out of their way to point out that through 2018, the Xperia X family would be their new lineup going forward. Afterwards, Sony had also gone on record stating that the line would replace the Xperia Z5 and it made sense. After all, the Xperia X lineup had been built from the ground up and hailed as a new start for Sony Mobile so another flagship device within 6 months of launching the X family felt odd at best.

Still, the GFXBench benchmarks made a pretty compelling case for new devices and now there are some photos to go along with it as well.

From the photos, we can see that the Sony Xperia F8331 incorporates a design that’s entirely different than the Xperia X family. With the design shift, the new Xperia will take advantage of USB-C for charging and syncing which not so coincidentally is said to make waterproofing much easier so don’t be surprised if the phone is water- and dustproof. As for the camera, we know thanks to benchmark results that Sony will be providing a 22-megapixel rear-facing shooter with 4K video and a 13-megapixel front-facing camera. As the photos show though, Sony will also be transitioning to the much better dual-LED flash system as well which will give you much more natural colors when taking photos of human subjects.

On a personal note, despite the F8331 being hailed as another flagship smartphone which never made sense to me, the phone certainly doesn’t look flagship to me. In fact I find it rather plain or ugly compared to the Xperia X line which at least looks premium. However I’m willing to hold my judgement until we see some official photos. At the same time, if the phone pictured above is indeed one and the same as the leaked benchmarks, it’s hard not to argue that it comes with superior specs than the Xperia X which makes the whole thing more baffling.

In short, I have no idea what the hell Sony Mobile is doing right now and with them retreating out of the US, Brazil, India, and China along side a price drop after only 10 days, I’m not convinced they know what they’re doing from a product strategy standpoint either.

As always, thanks to our anonymous tipster for sending this in!

Discuss:

What do you think about the pictured phone?

[Via GSMARENA]