Triple treat: Sony unveils Xperia XA1, XA1 Ultra and XZ Premium

By David Flynn, February 27 2017

Sony's 2017 Xperia line-up is an Android triple treat spanning the mid-range XA1 to a large-screen XA1 Ultra version and the top-shelf XZ Premium.

Unveilled overnight at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress expo, we're yet to hear when these will land in Australia and what sort of sticker they'll carry. But you can expect the XA1 series to be competitively priced and the XZ Premium to line up against the flagships of Apple, Samsung and co.

Let's kick off with the Xperia XZ Premium, which as you'd expect from a souped-up Sony smartphone is one big shiny mirror-like slab.

The 5.5 inch screen doesn't lurch into oversized territory – which seems to be a bothersome trend of 2017 – but it's built for the best pictures imaginable on any smartphone.

That's due not only to the 4K video technology but the inclusion of High Dynamic Range (HDR), handed down from Sony's big-screen Bravia tellies to amp up the colour, brightness, clarity and contrast to home theatre spec.

To shovel better images into the XZ Premium there's a 19Mp lens with larger pixels for better low-light capture and a bevy of special video shooting effects under the Motion Eye banner.

What else? The XZ Premium is water and dust resistant, sandwiched front and back by Gorilla Glass 5; driven by a meaty Snapdragon 835 processor with 64GB of storage and a microSD card slot; and can be recharged up to 60% in 45 minutes over the USB-C cable.

Sony will serve up the Xperia XZ Premium in Luminous Chrome and Deepsea Black.

Don't quite have a hankering to be on the bleeding edge? Think Xperia XA1.

The Xperia XA1 is the 2016 mid-range model with an upgraded camera (the same 23Mp shooter as the impressive Xperia Z5) and 5 inch screen that's good for video at 720p.

The Xperia XA1 Ultra upsizes things to a 6 inch 1080p display and a selfie-loving 16Mp front camera with image stabilisation, although both have the same mid-range internals built to handle less demanding day-to-day tasks.

They also share a new 'borderless' design with an almost continuous curve around the edges and will arive in white, black, pink and gold.