Sony Xperia Z4 announced

Sony has unveiled its new flagship phone, the Sony Xperia Z4, in a somewhat low key fashion.

No glitzy, heavily publicised, internationally focused launch event for the Sony Xperia Z3 follow-up. Rather, the Sony Xperia Z4 has been announced in Sony's home country of Japan.

If you want to find out about the new phone straight from the horse's mouth, you'd better have Google Translate ready.

As expected, the Sony Xperia Z4 looks very similar to the Sony Xperia Z3, with the same water and dust-proof metal frame design. The key difference, it seems, is that the Z4 has been subjected to a special treatment to increase its shinyness.

Given that the Xperia Z3 only launched seven months ago, this similarity is perhaps no surprise.

The Sony Xperia Z4 also appears to have the same 5.2-inch 1080p display and the same 20.7-megapixel camera as its immediate predecessor.

There are differences both internal and external. The new Sony Xperia Z4 might sport a familiar design, but it's slimmed down from 7.3mm to just 6.9mm thick. It's also 8g lighter at 144g.

That smaller frame will have been assisted by the fact that the Z4 comes with a slightly smaller battery than the Z3. It's now 2,930mAh rather than 3,100mAh.

Meanwhile it's powered by a 64-bit Snapdragon 810 CPU, which is backed by the same 3GB of RAM as before.

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While the main camera appears to have been pretty much untouched, Sony reveals that the front-facing camera here has a new wide-angle lens for more expansive selfie shots, as well as digital image stabilisation.

There's no news of an international model just yet, but the Sony Xperia Z4 will be hitting Japanese shops (in black, white, aqua green, and copper) this summer.

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