Sunday, May 22, 2016

Sony Xperia E5 surfaces in Russia?

Earlier this month, we passed along a rumor that Sony was planning to concentrate on the flagship Xperia X line for the next two years. In theory, that would mean the end of non-flagship lines including the Xperia C, Xperia M and the Xperia E. But that report might have jumped the gun. A document from Russia reveals that the Sony Xperia E5 might be alive and well.

Last month, two unannounced handsets were spotted on GFXBench, the Sony F3216 and the Sony F3311. Both sported a 4.6-inch screen. The F3216's display carried a 1080 x 1920 resolution. A MediaTek Helio P10 SoC was under the hood with an octa-core 1.9GHz CPU and the Mali-T860 GPU. A 21MP camera was found on back, with a 16MP selfie shooter in front.

The F3311 has a lower 720 x 1280 HD resolution on its 4.6-inch screen, and a MediaTek 6735 chipset was powering the phone. 1.5GB of RAM was inside, and the camera combo from back to front weighed in at 16MP/5MP.

We bring up these models because one of them, the F3311, was spotted on a document used to check compliance in Russia, with certain rules of the Customs Union. According to this memo, the F3311 is actually the Sony Xperia E5. Which means that rumors of the Xperia E's demise is premature. As far as the F3216 is concerned, this sounds very much like an Xperia Compact model.