Sony Xperia XZ Premium is the world's first smartphone with a 4K HDR display

Hot on the heels of Nokia, LG and Huawei's, Sony has unveiled their latest Xperia flagship Smartphone - the Xperia XZ Premium at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona.

The Xperia XZ Premium is undoubtedly the company's most exciting device in years and comes with a range of breakthrough features, the chief amongst them being the world's first 4K HDR display in a smartphone.

Hardware

 Unlike the LG G6, which has eschewed Qualcomm's latest processor - the Snapdragon 835 in favour of the older Snapdragon 821 in order to gain the first mover advantage over the Galaxy S8, Sony has decided to stick with the 835 for the XZ Premium.

The catch here is the fact that the XZ Premium will not be out before Spring, which is quite some time away.

Additionally, the smartphone comes with 4GB of RAM, a 3,230mAh battery with QuickCharge 3.0 support and Android 7.0 out of the box. As with previous Xperia's, the power button doubles up as a fingerprint scanner.

On the design front, the Xperia XZ Premium features a 'Glass Loop Surface' that wraps around the entire smartphone and like its spiritual predecessor, the Xperia Z5 Premium, comes with a incredibly reflective mirror finish.

Camera

Touted as a 'game-changing camera', the Sony Xperia XZ Premium comes with an entirely new camera system called the 'Motion Eye' which comes with the world's first memory stacked sensor.

Sony has embedded fast memory right into the camera stack which allows the smartphone to capture video at an astonishing 960 frames per second, which is 4 times slower than any other smartphone available today. 

Sony claims that the ' World's fastest image capture technology in a smartphone' allows the camera to capture instances that occur in the blink of an eye and reveal things beyond what the human vision is capable of seeing.

The added memory also brings with it improved predictive capture in the XZ Premium. The device starts to buffer images the moment it detects motion and selects 4 of the best photos by analysing the speed of the moving object.

Additionally, the XZ Premium also comes with the same triple-sensor system found in the Xperia XZ, although the sensor's resolution has been reduced slightly to 19 megapixels. It has an aperture of f/2.0 and comes with SteadyShot and an 'Anti-distortion' shutter. On the front, there is a 13MP camera with an aperture of f/2.0 for selfies.

Display

Along with the camera, the display is what sets the XZ Premium apart from the competition. It is the first smartphone in the world to come with a 4K HDR display which is 5.5' in size and is also 40% brighter than the Xperia Z5 Premium's panel.

The problem with the Xperia Z5 Premium was the fact that there was little or no 4K content available to enjoy on the smartphone. To remedy this, Sony has entered into a partnership with Amazon Prime Video where users will be able to enjoy a selection of 4K HDR content on their smartphones.

Gigabit LTE

Lastly, Sony has entered into a partnership with Qualcomm in order to create a new class of devices that are capable of gigabit LTE speeds. The XZ Premium will be the first smartphone to feature the same and offer not only high speeds but much better speeds everywhere.

Xperia XZs

Sony has also announced an updated version of the Xperia XZ dubbed the Xperia XZs. The XZs comes with the same 19MP 'Motion Eye' camera rear camera and 13MP front camera found in the Xperia XZ Premium with the rest of the specifications remaining exactly the same as the XZ.

Unlike the XZ Premium though, which will be available sometime in Spring, the XZs will be available in April in three color variants namely Warm Silver, Ice Blue and Black.

ZTE Gigabit Phone Launched at MWC 2017 |World's First 5G-Ready Smartphone | New Tech

Chinese telecoms giant ZTE unveiled Sunday what it said is the world’s first smartphone compatible with the lightening-fast 5G mobile Internet service that networks expect to have up and running by 2020

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The company said the Gigabit Phone is the first smartphone capable of download speeds reaching up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) – up to 10 times faster than the first generation of 4G services widely in use today.

The device, unveiled in Barcelona in northeastern Spain on the eve of the start on Monday of the Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest mobile fair, will allow for 360-degree panoramic Virtual Reality video and fast downloads of ultra Hi-Fi music and videos.

“With the new device, the way people stay connected will be changed forever. Focusing on 5Gtechnologies will be one of the key priorities of ZTE’s global development,” a ZTE spokesman said.

Tech firms are racing to develop products that will be compatible with 5G, shorthand for the fifth generation of networks, which promise blazing fast connectivity for a generation used to streaming movies and TV directly to phones.

South Korean carrier KT Corp aims to offer trial 5G services during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

The first large-scale commercial deployment of the technology is expected in 2020.

Forrester analyst Thomas Husson said ZTE was using the phone to “showcase innovation” and “offer a glimpse into the future when people will be able to download full movies in seconds” but it was not likely to be a big seller.

“The sad reality is that this smartphone will not end up in consumers’ pockets because both 5G and Virtual Reality are still years away to be a mass-market consumer reality,” he added.

Founded in 1985, ZTE offers telecom equipment and services and has customers in more than 160 countries, according to the company.

It is the only Chinese smartphone vendor with a meaningful presence in the United States, where its 10 percent market share makes it the fourth-largest vendor.