Sony's latest super-high-end phone, the Xperia XZ Premium, is now available in the U.S. at the rich price of $799. The open sales come after a week of pre-orders, but the retailers are the same: Amazon and Best Buy are the best places to go.
Even though it's been over three months since Sony announced the new flagship — and therefore flagships from Samsung, LG, HTC and more have since launched — it still has an impressive spec sheet. If you're willing to drop the cash, the Xperia XZ Premium is offering a Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage (plus SD card), a 3230mAh battery, IP68 waterproofing and of course that ridiculously dense 5.5-inch 4K display. The XZ Premium also has a new 19MP camera with 960 fps slow-motion video.
More: Complete Sony Xperia XZ Premium specs
Big money gets you a whole lot of specs, but still not a fingerprint sensor.
Despite its high-end price, the frustration of not having a fingerprint sensor in the U.S. version of Sony phones continues with the XZ Premium. It's pretty much inexcusable at this point, but as previously discussed this is likely a contractual issue that Sony is stuck with for the time being. Considering that the near-identical phone is on sale in the UK and Europe with a fingerprint sensor, we're looking at the same sort of situation as previous Xperia phones where the fingerprint hardware is there and Sony is disabling it in software.
For all of the quirks of Sony's U.S. phone strategy, it has managed to figure out distribution properly. Take your pick of retailers.
