It's the best Sony's got. The Xperia X Performance is the chosen one to fly the banner of Sony's revamped smartphone lineup. The top of the range, the Deus ex machina, the one to make you forget about your ex - the Z-series. Or is it?

The Xperia X Performance packs Qualcomm's top-end chipset of the season. It's also got a premium price tag but Sony is a premium brand to begin with and going 2 notches up or down the alphabet weren't going to change that.
Still, the 2016 flagships have more RAM, more and more of them have higher-res screens, and most can do 2160p video, if nothing else it's future-proofing.
Then again, stereo speakers aren't too widespread among the competition and water-proofing is even harder to get - both boxes checked on the Xperia X Performance spec sheet.
So we have a rare breed of flagship on our hands. It's priced as a flagship and it has one or two features that few other flagships have, yet it doesn't strive to beat everybody else in their specs race. We sure don't know what to make of it but we bet that some further digging might show us what it's all about.

Sony Xperia X Performance key features

• 5" 1,080 x 1,920px LCD display with 441ppi, X-Reality for Mobile, Triluminos technology and Dynamic Contrast Enhancer; scratch-resistant glass, oleophobic coating
• Android OS v6.0 Marshmallow with Xperia launcher
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset: quad-core Kryo CPU (2x2.15GHz +2x1.6GHz); Adreno 530 GPU; 3GB RAM
• 23 MP camera with 1080p@60fps video recording and tracking autofocus; 13 MP front-facing camera with 1080p@30fps video
• 32GB of built-in storage and a microSD card slot
• Single and dual-SIM models (DualSIM has a hybrid slot shared with the microSD card)
• LTE Cat.9 (450/50 Mbps); Dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac; GPS/GLONASS/Beidou, Bluetooth v4.2
• Active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic;
• 24-bit/192kHz Hi-Res audio
• 2,700mAh non-removable battery
• Fingerprint sensor
• Stereo speakers
• IP68 rating for dust- and water-proofing