Sony Xperia XA1 and XA1 Ultra hands-on: new life for the mid-range

Maybe even more so than is the case when you're building a flagship phone, crafting a new mid-ranger is a tricky business of picking the right components that will go in to forming that hardware. Do you aim to produce a handset that's basically a new look for last year's (or the year before's) flagship? Or come up with something that uses the latest and greatest parts designed specifically for this market segment?

Sony's gone back and forth with this balance, and its latest mid-rangers manage to do a little of both, uniting some recently-launched processors with a very ...