Sony is making a comeback in the mid-range smartphone segment and has announced two new smartphones for the Indian market — Xperia R1 and Xperia R1 Plus.
According to the company, the smartphones are designed exclusively for the Indian market and will be manufactured locally at Sri City facility in Andhra Pradesh.
This is an unexpected step from Sony as it had decided to exit the mid-range smartphone segment last year and said that it will only offer premium Xperia handset to ensure better profitability.
The Sony Xperia R1 features a 5.2-inch TFT LCD display with a screen resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage. It has a microSD card slot for expanding storage.
As of imaging, the phone comes with a 13-megapixel camera on the back with LED Flash and Sony‘s own Predictive Hybrid Autofocus which uses object tracking and motion prediction to focus on moving objects. On the front, there is an 8-megapixel camera that also has the same Predictive Hybrid focusing system.
On the other hand, the Sony Xperia R1 Plus comes with the same set of specs except for the RAM and storage. It packs 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. All the other specs, including display, processor and camera sensors remains same.
The devices are running on Android 7.0 Nougat operating system but the company has promised an upgrade to Android 8.0 Oreo. The smartphones are powered by a 2,620mAh battery.
Both the smartphones support Dual SIM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS and 4G VoLTE. It comes with a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer.
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The Xperia R1 and R1 Plus are priced at Rs 12,990 (~ $200) and Rs 14,990 (~ $231) respectively. Sony is offering two color options for both devices — Black and Silver. They will be available starting November 10 across all Sony Center, major mobile stores and e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart.
