Sony’s camera-focused, octa-core Xperia M5 will land in SA before year-end

There’s nothing like a little leak to get the official ball rolling, is there? Sony’s upcoming (and until now, unannounced) Xperia M5 was outed by a Russian website over the weekend, prompting an official reveal for South Africa and the rest of the world. Also outed was the company’s Xperia C5 Ultra (via Xperia Blog), though Sony have yet to confirm that handset locally.

We only just got our hands on the Xperia M4 Aqua here at home and the mid-range Sony handset is actually quite the little performer. But you might want to hold off until year-end as Sony’s going to be bringing the Xperia M5 to South Africa, with a bunch of improvements in tow.

The official line is that the Xperia M5’s camera will be reworked, with a 21.5MP front-facer being levered into this 5-inch mid-ranger. Sony is boasting about a 0.25 second hybrid autofocus for the main camera, which includes both phase and contrast detection. The main camera will be able to record in 4K, though there are no frame-rates from Sony direct, and the front-facing camera is set to be a 13MP monster as well. Nice.

On the specs side, the company’s taken a strange turn for the Xperia M5. It’ll be water and dust-proof but rather than opting for the Snapdragon processor line we saw in the M4, Sony’s going with MediaTek’s 2GHz Helio X10 octa-core processor. Though the rest of the specs look good, especially for a mid-ranger, with 3GB of RAM, 2,600mAh battery and LTE rounding out what we know, we can’t help but wonder if Sony’s going to be playing with the MediaTek Helio X20 for their larger models as a result of their choices here with the M5.

There are no official details on pricing for the Xperia M5 here yet, nor is there a final date. All they’ll give us at the moment is Q4 2015 – hopefully this waterproof handset will arrive in time for a beach holiday, anyway. We’ll keep you posted with more info as it appears.