UPDATE 10 February 2020: Sony has announced that it is withdrawing from Mobile World Congress 2020, so it won't be holding the event at the conference, do to the ongoing coronavirus situation. The company has provided us with the following statement:
"Sony has been closely monitoring the evolving situation following the novel coronavirus outbreak, which was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization on January 30th, 2020.
As we place the utmost importance on the safety and wellbeing of our customers, partners, media and employees, we have taken the difficult decision to withdraw from exhibiting and participating at MWC 2020 in Barcelona, Spain.
The Sony press conference will now instead take place at the scheduled time of 8:30am (CET) on February 24, 2020 as a video via our official Xperia YouTube channel to share our exciting product news. https://www.youtube.com/user/ sonyxperia
Sony would like to thank everyone for their understanding and ongoing support during these challenging times."
The original news coverage continues below:
Sony has invited the media to an event that's going to be held at Mobile World Congress 2020, where the company is expected to launch new Xperia smartphones.
Sony has always been a creature of habit when it comes to Mobile World Congress, holding an event on the Monday morning of the world's largest mobile trade show. In 2020 the company is sticking to form, with an event scheduled for 08:30 CET on Monday 24 February.
It's expected that the company will announce at least one Xperia handset, but unlike previous years, the details of that phone have not fully leaked (yet). We've seen some mock-ups of a phone going by the name of Xperia 5 Plus, a follow-on and update of the Xperia 5 from 2019, making it a flagship-grade device.
Little is known about the new handset, except that Sony wants to keep the 21:9 aspect display and will evolve the design slightly from the 2019 Xperia devices, and that it might be powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 865.
There's been one reference to a mid-range device too, popping up via a benchmarking application and running on the mid-range Snapdragon 765 hardware, potentially meaning that it's a 5G handset, but there's been very few details about this device.
Mobile World Congress is expected to present new handsets from a range of manufacturers. We're expecting devices from LG, Oppo, Xiaomi and Nokia in addition to Sony, and we'll be there to bring you all the news, as it happens.