Guarding trade secrets is crucial for companies that intends to get ahead of competitors or at least stay at par with them. Safeguarding trade secrets is important to prevent being preempted by the competitors.

This does not seem to be the case with Sony, leading to rumors circulating about the newest smartphone model, a new version of Sony Xperia, which will be released by this year.

Several unofficial reports about the upcoming Sony smartphone have recently circulated online. Some of these reports already have detailed descriptions of the specifications and event the name of the new handset.

The new smartphone is called Sony Xperia Z6 but according to PhoneArena, it might actually refer to five handsets with different sizes. According to speculation, four of these mobile phones will have the Snapdragon 820 chipset from Qualcomm.

 If it is the case, then these handsets will have better computing power in terms of speed and reliability.

A recent rumor was circulated claiming that the five new handsets from Sony will not all be released in 2016. According to the unofficial report, Sony will only release two new smartphones in 2016.

The rest will be later unveiled in the succeeding year.

Some publications have speculated that Sony could officially introduce the first new handset in May of 2016 then release it in June. The second smartphone model could be unveiled in September and released the following month.

According to the same report by cnBeta, Sony will not take the stage during the CES 2016, which is scheduled in January.