News: Sony announces XPERIA line of phones in MWC

Sony (Ericsson) has been underplaying a bit in the mobile segment recently, when compared to some of its other competitors. Nokia and Sony have a huge market for feature phones and both these companies have been forced to adopt the fast evolving Smartphone market. While Nokia teams up with Microsoft, Sony has gone all-in for Android. In the Mobile World Congress (MWC) they have announced 4 different XPERIA phones that should cover almost every possible need.



Sony announced its Next Generation Portable (NGP) recently and announced the PlayStation Suite program that could be made available in Smartphones. During that time the information about most of these phones had already leaked, so it was not a surprise. As a formality, Sony has announced its 4 Android Products planned for this year. These devices will extend the XPERIA line introduced in 2010 and hopefully will have better adoption and upgrade option from Sony.

XPERIA arc: This phone was already announced in CES 2011, but got re-iterated again in MWC. This device boasts of Mobile BRAVIA Engine ( BE same as the BRAVIA Engine from TVs), Exmor R, HDMI and 4.2 inch display.

The detailed specification about this device can be found here

XPERIA Neo: This one has HD video, HDMI, BRAVIA Engine (BE), EXmor R for mobile, 8 MP camera. This device is primarily for the photo and video people. The excellent sensor with good camera capabilities that Sony is normally good for, should make this phone stand out.

The detailed specification about this device can be found here

XPERIA Pro: This phone is meant to target people with messaging and mailing needs. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard will help people in accomplishing these tasks fast. This is pushed as a business phone, with the right mix of multi-media capabilities. It has almost the same set of capabilities as the Neo, with additional physical keyboard.

The detailed specification about this device can be found here

XPERIA PLAY: This will be the first PlayStation certified device from Sony, which is full featured and integrates the controller scheme buttons and trigger buttons for PSP like experience. The device will leverage the PlayStation Suite and support the PS One games that will be ported to Android platform. This is one of the most leaked phones and the details were all revealed as early as summer of 2010.

The detailed specification about this device can be found here

All these devices from Sony have the additional Skin on top of Android Gingerbread (2.3) and some of the styling is really nice, provided this does not hamper future updates. Sony had received bad press of its handing XPERIA Mini updates and hope the same will not happen here.

Since the interface remains similar across devices and the differentiation is around the form factor, the porting of update to these different devices should also be less chaotic. They are likely to hit the market in the next 3 months and looking forward to the first review on these phones.

Author: Vinod
Source: Engadget