Gadgetory

hey it's Chris Walter the verge here at Mobile World Congress 2018 and Easter Sony's newest phones the Xperia z2 the Xperia XE 2 compact now we've seen years of Sony recycling the same design year after year after year big bezels fingerprint magnets things like that this year they're putting effort back into their phones again will it make a difference I'm not sure but it's a pretty promising start now let me make this clear the xe2 still has larger bezels around the screen than other flagship phones do they're still picking up for Sony to hit its name on the front of the thing but they're less blocky and distracting than before and the screen itself feels more modern thanks to its 5.7 inch 18 by 9 display with a resolution of 2160 by 1440 there are front-facing stereo speakers at the top and bottom and there's a nice metal frame running around the whole phone the USBC jack is on the bottom volume and power buttons on the side and a SIM card slot up top that also supports microSD cards if the 64 gigs and built-in storage aren't enough but if you're looking for a headphone jack you won't find one sony is following the herd and getting rid of it altogether probably hoping you're gonna buy their wireless headphones instead overall though this phone feels very premium and it's water-resistant and supports fast wireless charging from the back the XE - kind of strikes me as very HTC with its camera and fingerprint reader both centered in the middle that main camera is still 19 megapixels sony claims this is the very first phone that can capture a 4k video in HDR and you can even record slow-mo footage at 960 frames per second in Full HD 1080p that's pretty cool also Sony's 3d creator app can now scan in a 3d model of your face using the selfie camera up front and yes there's now a dedicated to fingerprint reader for its last several phones Sony designed the power button to double as a fingerprint reader but for some terrible reason that the company disabled that feature here in the US we've been stuck using the old-fashioned pin code all this time but now everybody gets a fingerprint scanner and it's in the right spot now inside the xc2 is the qualcomm snapdragon 845 the latest greatest processor that's ready for 5g gigabit data speeds it's 25% faster than last year's Snapdragon 835 and as a GPU that's up to 30% more powerful but a lot of phones are going to have the same chip in 2018 so sony put something else inside the XE 2 to help it stand out more it's called a dynamic vibration system and the tagline is that it helps you feel your entertainment so the phone will vibrate and Rumble when you're listening to music on Spotify watching trailers on YouTube streaming netflix or playing games you can adjust the intensity or just turn it off if you don't want your phone to vibrate all the time sony isn't yet telling us when the XC 2 comes out or how much it's going to cost but you can get it in black green silver or pink there's a smaller version coming - that's the XC 2 compact it's got a 5-inch screen and the same powerful Snapdragon age 45 inside but it's got a plastic back loses that fancy vibration system and doesn't support wireless charging now I'm not sure if these phones are enough to reverse Sony's smartphone fortunes probably not sony barely exists in the u.s. mobile market carriers like Verizon and AT&T stop selling their phones years ago but at the very least it's nice to see a fresh design small bezels and a fingerprint sensor there are plenty of awesome phones during MWC 2018 and draw the latest news and all those check out youtube.com slash the verge