Sony announced a new line-up of smartphones at the Mobile World Congress: the Xperia X Performance, Xperia X, and the Xperia XA. There wasn’t a demo unit of the X Performance available at the exhibition floor so we were only able to play around with the X and the XA. Our initial verdict after spending close to an hour with both phones? Sony should have just made one device by combining the best that both the X and XA had to offer. If they did that then they would have had one of the most compelling and attractive mid-range offerings in the market today.

Here’s the thing. The Sony Xperia X has better specifications. It has a full HD display (vs HD of Xperia XA), runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 processor with 3GB RAM (vs Mediatek MT6755 processor and 2GB RAM), and a 23MP primary snapper (vs 13MP). While it has superior specs, the puzzling thing is that the Sony Xperia X looks less premium than the Xperia XA. For some reason, Sony decided to give the edge-to-edge screen to the lower priced and lower spec’ed Sony Xperia XA.

These days hardware design and aesthetics is just as important as technical specifications. Combining the power of the X with the looks of the XA would have made for a really strong mid-range offering, one that could easily pose a strong challenge the mid-range offerings of Samsung, LG, and Apple. We kinda felt that Sony missed a big opportunity here to deliver something that could have really changed the game for them.

As for the Xperia X Performance, we’ll have to hold our initial impressions for it as we never got around to playing with a unit. We just saw it during the announcement. The specifications though are a bit confusing.

What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments section below.