Sony has just announced their latest Xperia smartphones at IFA, the Xperia XZ and Xperia X Compact. Although the X Compact leaked a week ago, as well as the name "Xperia XZ," the specs and features were anyone's guess. Now that Sony has gone public, I'm impressed by the pair of phones.

Sony is banking on the XZ's 23MP camera and its new "triple image sensing technology," which entails a primary camera sensor and two assisting sensors. There are a few other camera technologies at work here, but Sony is claiming the camera should capture blur-free photos in low-light conditions. The XZ's camera is also great for videos, with 4K recording and five-axis stabilization borrowed from Sony's Handycam cameras. There's also a 13MP front camera.

Besides the cameras, the XZ still has a lot to offer. The new "loop surface" design is gorgeous, with a 5.2" 1080p display on one side and an aluminum back on the other. The XZ is powered by a Snapdragon 820 CPU and 3GB of RAM, and a USB Type-C port for charging. There's also Dual SIM support and a MicroSD card slot, supporting up to 256GB of external storage. The XZ also packs IP65/68 water and dust resistance, but Sony warns that you should allow the bottom port to completely dry before attempting to charge it. As you can expect, the XZ will also ship with Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

The phone also includes Sony's 'Battery Care' technology, which detects when you leave your phone to charge overnight and doesn't continuously charge the phone to 100%. There's also 'Smart Cleaner', which claims to save RAM by clearing apps you don't regularly use. I'm hesitant to believe Smart Cleaner's claims, due to the advertisement claiming it will "optimize RAM and ROM memories" (last time I checked, ROM stood for Read Only Memory).

But what about the X Compact? As usual, the Compact model sports a smaller size and lower specs. It has the same loop surface design, but with a 4.6" 720p screen instead of the XZ's larger 5.2" 1080p panel. The XZ's 23MP camera with triple image sensors is also present in the Compact, but the front camera has been degraded to 5MP. The Compact sports a Snapdragon 650 CPU, and the battery has a capacity of 2700mAh. All the software features from the XZ, such as the Battery Care technology, are present here as well.

The Xperia XZ will launch in October and the X Compact will launch in September, and no pricing has been announced yet.

Source: Sony Mobile, XZ Product Page, X Compact Product Page