Sony Ericsson – soon to be renamed as Sony Mobile – have announced two brand new smartphones at this year’s CES. The Xperia S and the Xperia ion both feature high resolution displays among other hardware improvements.
The Xperia S, part of its new Xperia NXT series, features a 4.3-inch display, a 1.5GHz dual core processor and 32GB of storage. It also features two cameras – a 12-megapixel rear camera capable of recording 1080p and a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera capable of recording 720p footage; NFC support and runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. It will be upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich in Q2, and will hit globally this quarter.
The Xperia ion is the first LTE phone from Sony and has a 4.6-inch display and a 12-megapixel rear camera. The front-facing camera also (apparently) can record HD videos. It runs Android 2.3 on a 1.5GHz dual core processor, and will have 16GB of storage on board. It appears to be US-only and will be on AT&T in Q2.
Another two phones were also announced by Sony Ericsson only for the Japanese market. The Xperia arco HD is a follow-up to the Xperia arco in Japan, with more “Japan-specific features” like infrared data exchange and mobile TV; and the Xperia NX, which is a Japanese version of the Xperia S, again with its own features.
Both will be out in Japan in the autumn.