Sony showed no let up in its pursuit of the premium tier of the smartphone market, unveiling two new models pitched on their entertainment credentials.

In a launch event on the opening day of Mobile World Congress 2018, Hideyuki Furumi, global EVP of sales and marketing at Sony Mobile Communications, emphasised the company’s strong position in terms of combining technology and content as he unveiled two new smartphones and a set of wireless earbuds.

“It’s truly impressive how Sony has fully embraced the convergence of content and technology,” he said, pointing to “world first” features including the incorporation of 4K High Dynamic Range (HDR) movie recording technology in the smartphones.

“We are pushing the technology boundaries even further with our advanced motion eye camera system, taking the movie recording to the extreme”.

A key element in delivering a high quality entertainment experience remains the hardware within the smartphones. Furumi pointed to the use of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 mobile platform, which is capable of delivering data rates of 1.2Gb/s, and “best in class battery life and wireless charging”.

Furumi unveiled the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact devices, which it pitched as being “immersive entertainment” devices. The XZ2 features a 5.7-inch HDR display, stereo speakers and a new dynamic vibration system designed to deliver haptic feedback when viewing content including films and music videos, or playing games.

XZ2 Compact offers similar features in a smaller package with 5-inch display.

Both feature Corning Gorilla Glass 5, metal frames, and IP65 and IP68 certification. They go on sale in March: markets and pricing were not revealed.

Furumi said the Xperia Ear Duo earbuds differ from the competition by enabling users to hear what is going on around them while listening to music. They sport a battery life of up to four hours, and will be available in the US in March (orders can be placed now via Amazon).