Sony Xperia Z6 release in 2017

Best new phones 2017: Sony Xperia Z6

Sony Xperia Z6 UK release date: TBC
Sony neglected to announce the Sony Xperia Z6 at MWC 2016, instead revealing a new Xperia X family comprising the Sony Xperia X and Sony Xperia XA. But this doesn't mean the Sony Xperia Z6 is dead: never say never, says the company, which has since clarified that it isn't ruling out the possibility at some point in the future.

Now we'll take a look at some of the best phones that have already gone on sale in 2016.

Sony Xperia Z6 specification and feature rumours: What we want from the Sony Xperia Z6; what we expect from the Sony Xperia Z6
Most of the rumours circulating so far concern when the Sony Xperia X6 will be released, rather than its specifications. To our minds, that adds fuel to the theory that the Sony Xperia Z6 won't land until September - if its launch really were just a few weeks ago then no doubt we'd have heard more details by now.
Much of what you'll read below is speculation, based on what we've come to expect from Sony and what we know about the smartphone market in 2016. However, there has been one leak from Japanese site Docomo, which seems realistic to us. According to the site, the Sony Xperia Z6 will feature a 5.2in WQHD IPS display, a Snapdragon 820 chipset with Adreno 530 graphics, 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, IP68 certification (waterproof protection), Bluetooth 4.2, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and 23Mp/5.1Mp rear/front cameras.
Those specs are listed alongside the following image, which may simply be a Sony Xperia Z5.

Below you can read what we think we'll see in the Sony Xperia Z6.
Design-wise we can expect something similar to previous Xperia phones since Sony seems to be continually sticking with the recognisable square shape. We'd like to see something a bit different, though to shake things up a bit -while maintaining that distinctive Sony style. Waterproofing is unlikely to be going anywhere, and the new fingerprint scanner will more than likely continue to reside in the power button.
It seems Sony has settled on the 5.2in screen size for its flagship Xperia range so it's unlikely this will change on the Xperia Z6. The resolution is much harder to predict with the firm sticking to full-HD so far instead of jumping to Quad HD.
We mentioned earlier that the Z5 Premium's 4K screen could make its way to the standard Z6, but actually a Quad-HD display would be a more logical next step for the phone.
It's widely anticipated that most high-end Android smartphones next year will come with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor and that's what we expect for the Xperia Z6. That said, it's been reported by Digitimes that Sony could be about to follow Apple, Huawei and Samsung in producing its own processors for smartphones.
You can bet there will be 3- or 4GB of RAM and likely 16/32GB of storage.
That might not seem like much but Sony is one of the big name phone makers to stick with offering expandable storage via Micro-SD card slot and we don't think that feature will be dropped.

Sony prides itself on long lasting battery life but we'd like to see the addition of wireless charging. With the Xperia Z6 arriving in 2016, reversible USB Type-C is pretty much a given.
The Xperia Z5 range got the first camera upgrade since the Xperia Z1 with the new 23Mp shooter so will the Xperia Z6 get another upgrade? We think not based on history, at least nothing major but Sony will likely make improvements.
On the software front, the Xperia Z6 will probably run Android 6.0 Marshmallow, with an upgrade to Android N in early 2017.
As soon as we heard anything further on the Sony Xperia Z6 we'll update this article.