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Sony owes Xperia owners a refund over faulty water resistance
When you buy a phone billed as water-resistant, you generally expect it to survive accidental dunks. Some Sony phone owners have a very different story, though -- their supposedly resistant phones took water damage that required an expensive fix. If you're one of them, we have good news. A preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit will offer a 50 percent refund of the retail price to US customers who bought a water-resistant Sony Xperia device and had to file water damage claims. The list of affected hardware covers a whopping 24 phones and tablets sold in the US, ranging from the Xperia Z1 through to relatively recent devices like the Xperia Z5.
Sony Xperia Z5 and Z5 Compact arrive in the US
As promised, Sony has brought its latest and greatest smartphones to the US. Both the Xperia Z5 and Xperia Z5 Compact are now on sale in unlocked form through Amazon, Best Buy, B&H and other shops at respective prices of $599 and $499. Both pack a fair punch for the price between their Snapdragon 810 processors, 32GB of storage and 23-megapixel rear cameras. The big differences are the displays (5.2 inches on the Z5 versus 4.6 on the Compact) and RAM (3GB versus 2GB). They should work nicely on AT&T, T-Mobile and other American networks that share their frequencies. However, you shouldn't expect exactly the same phone that you'd get elsewhere -- there's a catch.
Sony's next phone is yet another rectangular slab
If you were hoping for a radical change in Sony's Xperia formula, bad news -- it looks like the company is sticking with its blocky "Omnibalance" design for now. A tweet from Sony UK is teasing a new smartphone that will be unveiled on September 2nd, immediately before the IFA trade show. It shows a blurry handset capturing a photo, with the tagline "a smartphone with greater focus" underneath. The combination would suggest an upgraded camera, although it's possible the message is also hinting at the new, stripped back Android skin it's been testing recently. Regardless, we're expecting this to be either the Xperia Z5 or Z5 Compact -- perhaps both, if Sony mimics last year's reveal. The photo might be a little blurry, but it's obvious Sony is preparing another rectangular slab. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but given the Xperia Z4/Z3+ is only a few months old, we're hoping Sony has made some changes elsewhere to make this model a worthy upgrade.
