Just kidding! Sony Xperia 1 II pre-order quickly retracted after showing hefty price-tag
For months, Sony has been pretty mum on launch details for the Xperia 1 II, at least outside of its home country. The flagship, which was announced back in February, goes on sale this month in Japan. There it carries the already high price of ￥133,600, which equates to just over US$1200. And while Sony has yet to officially confirm the launch date or price for the US or Europe, a premature pre-order listing for the device may have given us an idea of what to expect, and it's not great.
B&H may have jumped the gun because the option to pre-order the $1200 smartphone was quickly removed after several publications caught wind of it. That's right, $1200. It sounds like a lot to ask for, particularly from a company whose mobile division has fallen short over the past... well lately. Especially a time when the world is in economic hardship, and even Samsung is having trouble selling its ever-popular Galaxy phones, which are similarly priced.
That's not to say the Xperia 1 II is a bad phone. On paper, it hits just about all the flagship beats. It has a gorgeous design with a large 6.5" 21:9 OLED display that manages to squeeze a 4K resolution, sub-6 5G connectivity, a 4,000mAh battery, updated camera sensors with Zeiss optics, and all the latest internals. To start, you're getting 256GB of expandable storage which is double that of many base flagship models. Bluetooth 5.1 is on-board, and the USB Type-C port supports the USB 3.1 standard with Power Delivery. All of this is powered by the top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G chipset, which isn't cheap itself considering the modem is sold separately. $1200 seems somewhat reasonable considering all you're getting, but one can't help but feel like a price like that is a tad tone-deaf right now. And it's unlikely that the Xperia 1 II will be sold through US carriers, making monthly installments harder to come by.
While the pre-order price was taken down of the B&H website, the device page remains and allows users to get notified of any updates regarding the flagship, which is "coming soon". With any luck, the retracted price could mean that this detail is yet to be solidified, and thus Sony could take the hint and bring the price down a notch. Probably isn't too likely, but it would no doubt help the company sell an otherwise great-sounding smartphone.