Xperia Compact and Xperia Ace 2 rumor mill cranks up a notch thanks to salt-pinching appearance of Sony A smartphone with Snapdragon 480 SoC

A screenshot allegedly taken from Geekbench 5 has offered up some potential details about an upcoming Sony smartphone. Records from this benchmark can be easily doctored and there is a distinct lack of details with this screenshot, so salt-pinching time for Xperia Compact fans here. The image, shared by a Reddit user called u/McKeeth0ON, describes a model “Sony A” that is powered by an SM4350 chipset from Qualcomm. This points to the new Snapdragon 480 that aims to bring 5G connectivity to the mid-range masses.

The screenshot also shows that the Sony smartphone boasts of 6 GB RAM (5.33 GB), so it is clearly not a flagship contender like the Xperia 1 III with its potential 12-16 GB RAM. With a new Xperia Compact expected to be somewhere in Sony’s pipeline, it has been suggested that this could be the Sony Xperia Ace 2, which means good news and bad news for fans of the brand. While there are many out there practically screaming for Sony to produce another true Xperia Compact, which appears to be the case here, the previous small Xperia Ace was released just for the Japan market. It seems the Xperia Ace 2 is also likely headed for a domestic distribution only status.

Presuming the Geekbench image isn’t fake, it’s somewhat disappointing that the benchmark scores for the potential Sony Xperia Compact and its SD480 SoC have been cropped out. Fortunately, the same chip turned up in a recent benchmark run for the Nokia X20, which resulted in 507 points for the single-core test and 1,661 points for the multi-core benchmark. Appropriately enough, a similar score for the Sony A would put it close to the average mark for the Xperia XZ2 Compact (508 points) in the single-core chart but closer to the XZ1 Compact (1,602 points) for multi-core performance.

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