There's a whisper on the wind that Sony's event at IFA 2018 - that's the one happening later today - will see the firm unveiling a new flagship dubbed the Sony Xperia XZ3. Ahead of the event, the phone has shown up in a Geekbench listing running Android Pie, aka Android 9.0.

An Xperia XA3 - a mid-range alternative - is also tipped, but this too has popped up in the same benchmark suite wearing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660.

The flagship Xperia XZ3, however, appears to have a Snapdragon 845 like most other lead models right now. It also packs 4GB of RAM, which might look a little sheepish rubbing shoulders with a lot of 6GB and 8GB contenders on the market right now.

If the Xperia XZ3 does indeed launch with Android Pie onboard, it'll be the first major flagship to come with the new OS out the box, beating Google's own Pixel 3 range to the punch. Pie is already available on Google's existing Pixel phones, of course, as well as on the Essential PH-1, but this was pushed as an update.

There's more evidence to suggest the Xperia XZ3 will be showing up in Berlin. Hours ahead of the expected announcement, product renders of the handset have appeared online. The renders show the handset from all angles in a range of colours, including white, black, green, and purple, and also illustrate that it does not have a display notch.

The display does appear to have curvature on the edges, however. Meanwhile, the fingerprint scanner is on the back, so there's no in-display stuff here yet. The primary camera is also a single-sensor, which is an interesting move.