If you’ve ever found the music from your smartphone to be lacking, Sony wants your attention with the Xperia Z4v. Sony’s latest flagship phone, exclusive to Verizon in the U.S., can actually detect what kind of headphones you’re listening with, optimizing the music or gameplay so you’ll hear the best sound possible.

That’s a pretty cool trick, but what will probably matter to more Z4v owners is that Sony has finally — finally! — gotten things right with its waterproofing. Up until now, all Sony Xperia phones have been impressively water resistant, but with an irritating trade-off: a USB port cap you need to pop on and off every time you want to charge it.

The Sony Xperia Z4v finally ditches the rubberized cap and sports a bare microUSB port. Sony’s Xperia tablets have had the feature for a little while, and now the phones will enjoy it, too — with the one caveat that, after you take the device out of the water, you should let the port dry completely before submerging it again.

The Xperia Z4v is definitely Sony’s flagship phone, technically superior to even the Z4 that debuted at the end of April. Although they’re both powered by a 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor, the Z4v has a 5.2-inch Quad HD display with 2,560 x 1,440 pixels — the same as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and LG G4.

PlayStation 4 owners will like the phone’s Remote Play feature, which lets you stream games from the console to the phone over your home network (the Xbox One will offer a similar feature with Windows 10). That way you can keep playing even if your TV suddenly becomes contested territory, either with the PlayStation controller or a phone-specific controller accessory (theXperia Z3v featured PS4 Remote Play, too).

Sony worked hard to soup up the Xperia Z4v camera. Although it has the same 20.7-megapixel resolution as the Z3v, the ISO rating can now go as high as 12,800 for better low-light pics. There’s also a better auto mode (the mode most people use almost all of the time), which can choose between 52 different scene settings, including “gourmet” for food pics. Of course, the camera can capture 4K video — pretty much standard these days.

The front camera is improved, too, now with a 5MP sensor and a wide-angle 25mm lens. And if you’ve ever had the “distorted selfie” problem where people on the periphery look slightly bent, Sony says the Z4v packs imaging software to correct that problem.

The Z4v is also capable of playing high-res audio. The built-in 32GB of memory will fill up quick with high-res audio, but there’s a microSD port for more.

The 3,000 millamp-hour (mAh) battery is relatively robust, and the phone has a low-power mode where all wireless communication is cut off in standby (though you can whitelist various apps, like Facebook, to keep pulling data). An ultra-low-power mode cuts off everything except calls and texting; Sony says the battery can last for up to seven days in this mode.

Sony’s Xperia Z4v is an attractive package of tech, and it makes us wonder why it even bothered with the Z4. No price information yet, but stay tuned.

Source: Mashable