Sony has made another splash in the mobile market with what it has dubbed “the world’s most waterproof smartphone”.
The Xperia M2 Aqua, which will be released in the UAE in mid-September, allows users to take pictures both above and underwater, so fears of dropping it in the bath, sink, swimming pool or sea are a thing of the past.
While Sony’s flagship Xperia Z2 already provided high-level water resistance, the Aqua M2 is positioned in the mid-range with a price tag of Dh1,299.
With a waterproof rating of IP65/68, Sony says the M2 Aqua is protected against the ingress of water and dust to the highest levels specified by the Ingress Protection standards.
65 means it is dust tight and resistant to jets of water, while 68 means it is waterproof on submersion to 1 metre for more than 30 minutes.
It has been reported in the past week that an Xperia Z2 was dropped by a water-skier in Sweden and survived for six weeks at the bottom of the sea before being collected by a scuba diver.
A statement from Sony said there are some devices in China which could be considered equal best, such as the Huawei Ascend G350 and Konka W880 with IP68, however “these are on very limited distribution in comparison to the Xperia M2 Aqua, and do not specify IP65 as well as IP68 unlike the Sony device”.
“Xperia M2 Aqua is a significant milestone in our product portfolio as we bring yet another of our signature technologies to a new category of smartphones,” said Spyridon Gousetis, director of Marketing Middle East and Africa at Sony Mobile.
“The popularity of Xperia M2 showed us that there was a huge demand for premium Sony features at an affordable price-point. Following consumer feedback, we’ve now taken this a step further by bringing our waterproof expertise to a mid-range smartphone for the first time with Xperia M2 Aqua.”
The phone also features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with quad-core 1.2 GHz CPUs2 and 4G LTE capabilities and an 8MP camera with Timeshift, which allows 31 pictures to be taken in two seconds.
The device will be available in black, white or copper.
Last month Sony unveiled the Xperia C3, which it labelled "the ultimate selfie smartphone".
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Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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