Sony, in the midst of painful restructuring, launched a new flagship smartphone model – Xperia Z4 – which is set to become available in Japan mid-2015.

Sony executives have been at pains recently to underline the firm’s commitment to the mobile sector, despite a scaling down of its mobile operations and some rumours that it may exit the market altogether.

The launch of Xperia Z4, targeted at the high-end of the market, seems to indicate that Sony still wants to be seen as a player.

“There’s a broad variety in the prices of smartphones, from around $100 to $1,400 at the upper end,” Hiroki Totoki, appointed last year to run Sony’s mobile unit, told a news conference, quoted by Reuters. “We want to focus in the upper half of that.”

Details of the new device are nonetheless scant. No exact launch date was given, nor details on carrier partners or price.

As reported by CNET, however, some spec information is available.

Following on from last year’s flagship Xperia Z3, the Z4 features a 5.2-inch, full-HD display and shaves off a few millimetres of thickness for a slim 6.9mm, 144-gram design.

The face of the phone measures 146mm by 72mm, with a slim bezel around the 1,920×1,080-pixel screen.

At a press event at this year’s Mobile World Congress, Totoki said you cannot cost-cut your way to success.

“Instead, our success will come from not just optimising our core smartphone business, but from new ideas, new business opportunities, and even new ways of working,” he said. “So that whatever changes we encounter, we will develop products that excite and entertain, but do so with profit.”