Sony tipped to launch mystery budget phone later this year

Sony recently unveiled the Xperia 1 III and the Xperia 5 III flagship models as well as the mid-range Xperia 10 III. But if a machine-translated post on Weibo written by a tipster is legitimate, Sony purposely moved up the release schedule of its new 2021 flagships to release both of them during the same time period. This will allow it to release another phone that will either be a budget-priced model or an “Ultra” version of another Sony handset.

The machine-translated message from a tipster known as ZackBuks, while a bit confusing, seems to suggest that by releasing both 2021 flagships together, it opens up some time to allow a “new U release” to take place months earlier than in past years. Normally Sony unveils its compact flagship model in the fall which is why it was so surprising to see the Xperia 5 III introduced at this time of the year.

The last such Sony handset to use the “Ultra” title in its name was 2018’s Xperia XA2 Ultra which featured a larger screen, more storage, a larger battery, and an additional front-facing camera compared to the “non-Ultra” Xperia XA2. Another theory is that the “new U release” is a refresh of last year’s budget-priced Xperia L4 model. For those hoping for a top-of-the-line “Ultra” model powered by the Snapdragon 888 SoC, the tipster’s post would seem to make that impossible since he comes right out and states that the 2021 flagships are the Xperia 1 III and the Xperia 5 III.

The Xperia 1 III features a 6.5-inch AMOLED display with a 4K resolution (1644 x 3840) and a tall and thin 21:9 aspect ratio. Powered by the Snapdragon 888 SoC, this model sports 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage. A quad-camera setup is found on the back.