Sony surprised us by launching an all-new series of smartphones at its press conference at MWC 2016 in Barcelona on 22 February. Called the “X” series, it currently consists of two new smartphones - the Xperia X and the Xperia XA - which are now available to buy. Even more surprising, this new Xperia X family appears replacing the mighty Xperia Z. Read on to find out everything you need to know so far about the Sony Xperia X and the Sony Xperia XA.

Both the Xperia X and Xperia XA boast next generation camera technology, battery and design. They take a whole new direction for Sony, and the company says that the new series “embodies Sony Mobile's new brand vision.”

Also see: Huawei P9 release date, plus feature and spec rumours

Sony Xperia X UK release date: Where to buy the Xperia X

The Xperia X became abvailable to buy at the end of May. You can buy it from carriers on a pay-monthly contract, or you can buy it SIM-free. It'll set you back around £460, althouh Sony's asking price is actually £499.99 so you'll need to shop around to get that lower price.

You'll find the Xperia X availble at competitive prices from the likes of:

Amazon

Carphone Warehouse

Mobile Phones Direct

Mobile Fun

Sony Xperia XA UK release date: Where to buy the Xperia XA

Sony has also released the Sony Xperia XA in June. It's cheaper than the X at £239.99, and if you shop around you might even find it for less.

If you're after Rose Gold, you'll need to turn to Carphone Warehouse for it, but that's where many of the best deals can be found. Click here to see the Carphone Warehouse Xperia X deals.

It's also available from other carriers and retailers including Mobile Phones Direct, Amazon and Three.

Sony Xperia X design

The Xperia X phones look a bit different to Sony's blocky Z series, with curved glass displays and rounded edges that make the frame continuous, designed to feel comfortable in the hand. And the XA takes things one step further with an edge-to-edge display. Both are 5 inches diagonally, with a Full HD screen for the X and a 720p display for the XA. They both measure 7.9 mm thick.

As an extra touch, the Xperia X and Xperia XA also have matching Style Covers available in white, graphite black, lime gold and rose gold, the four colours available for the phone itself. We're not too keen on the lime gold but white and graphite black are nice.

Sony Xperia X specs & features

Both smartphones offer the next generation Xperia camera, with super-fast and sharp spontaneous photos, and the Xperia X goes on to add Predictive Hybrid Autofocus into the mix. The new autofocus feature lets you pick a subject and then predicts its motion to keep the focus trained on it. We're looking forward to trying this for ourselves to see how well it works, so keep an eye out for our hands-on review coming this week.

More specifically, the Xperia X's rear camera is 23Mp, while the front-facing camera is 13Mp, while the XA has a 13Mp rear camera and an 8MP front camera.

The Xperia X is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 650, so not the fastest processor by any means but we'll see how it fairs in our benchmark tests. Similar processors can be found in the likes of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy A9, while flagship phones from Sony, Samsung and more boast more powerful processors in the Snapdragon 800 series.

Meanwhile the XA has a MediaTek MT6755 octacore processor.

There's a microSD card slot for up to 200GB of storage in both smartphones.

The X series also includes smart battery management, which aims to deliver up to two days battery life on one charge.

More to follow (we are updating this article as Sony shows off the new phones at MWC. You can watch here).

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