Sony Xperia Z6 Release Date Rumor: Flagship to Release in 'First Half of 2016' with Two Models
Sony released this year's flagship phones a few months ago, but this hasn't stopped the grapevine from already speculating about next year's flagship. According to multiple reports, the Xperia Z6 will arrive in the first half of 2016 in two variants.
The first report came from Xperia Blog. The site suggested that the Sony Xperia Z6 release date might have been hinted at during a press conference held by T-Mobile Poland. In that particular event, the Polish arm of the mobile operator had shown one "very interesting" slide. The slide supposedly showed the launching plans of new smartphones.
According to the slide, Samsung and Microsoft will release their newest Galaxy and Lumia phones by mid 2016. HTC will launch its HTC One model at the end of the quarter, and LG will follow at the start of the second quarter of next year. Finally, for Sony, the slide detailed that the Japanese company will be bringing out two new models in the Xperia series. The launch for these new models will be in the second quarter but not before June 2016.
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The report adds that Sony could be holding an earlier event to announce the new Sony Xperia phones. The site suggests the announcement might be made on February, specifically during the MWC trade show in Barcelona, Spain.
Meanwhile, a separate report seems to corroborate Xperia Blog's scoop. According to Digitimes (subscription required), citing "industry sources," Sony is likely to release only two models instead of five next year. This year, Sony had released five models: Xperia Z5 and Xperia Z5 Premium in single- and dual-SIM variants and Xperia Z5 Compact.
As a result of this decrease in the number of variants, Sony will also supposedly place orders with Arima Communications and Campal Electronics only and discontinue its production at Foxconn Electronics, according to Digitimes' sources.
Sony has not commented on any of these reports as of this writing.
