Xperia S and Xperia ION to be announced at CES?

by XB on January 7, 2012

in News,Rumours

SEMC Blog has just revealed that the two Sony Ericsson handsets to be announced at CES 2012 will be the Xperia S (LT26i Nozomi) and the Xperia ION. We already know all about Nozomi, but we don’t know which specs correlate with Xperia ION. SEMC Blog says that the Xperia ion will have a 4.6-inch display.

By deduction, it may be easy to think that the Xperia ION is the Sony Ericsson LT28at Aoba. After all this is the only handset we have heard of that has a 4.55-inch display. However, one of our sources recently got in contact to say that the Sony Ericsson LT28 Aoba codename has now been assigned to a different handset. Aoba will in fact have a 5-inch display and will be available for NTT DoCoMo (Japan) and AT&T (US) only.

The 4.55-inch Xperia ION is instead expected to be the LT29i Hayabusa. It is meant to look very similar to the Xperia arc but will have specifications similar to that of the Xperia S (Nozomi). As always, this is all speculation for now. All will be formally revealed on Monday 9 January at CES 2012.

Sony Ericsson LT22i Nypon concept pic

by XB on December 7, 2011

in News,Rumours

If you remember those very nice looking concept pictures of Nozomi released at the weekend, well we have another one for you by the same guy. This time it is a concept render for the Sony Ericsson LT22i Nypon. This phone is meant to be sporting a 1GHz dual-core U8500 chipset from ST-Ericsson, 4-inch qHD display, 8MP Exmor R camera, 1GB RAM and 16GB ROM.

What we don’t know at this stage is whether the person who designed these renders has any inside scope at Sony Ericsson. The Nozomi render could very well have been based on some of the leaked pictures we had already seen. For Nypon, we’ve not seen any leaked images at all, so it’s difficult to know how faithful the concept will be to reality. The Nypon concept is a simpler affair than Nozomi, with no capacitive buttons on the front. Click through for a larger pic after the cut and let us know which one you prefer in the comments.

Via Concept Phones.

Sony Ericsson LT28at pops up in benchmark; suggests 1.5GHz dual-core Xperia heading to AT&T

by XB on December 2, 2011

in News,Rumours

The Sony Ericsson LT28at model has appeared in the AnTuTu benchmark. This is interesting for several reasons. Firstly the ‘at‘ part in the model number suggests that this variant will run on the AT&T network in the United States. More than likely it will be compatible with AT&T’s 21MBps HSPA+ 4G network, much like the Xperia PLAY 4G (R800at).


Secondly, the performance numbers from the benchmark put it on a near identical level to the Sony Ericsson LT26i (Nozomi), which also appeared on AnTuTu recently. This probably means that it will come with a dual-core 1.5GHz chipset like Nozomi and could even be the US version of that handset. However, if that were the case we imagine Sony Ericsoon would have used model number LT26at.

Even more confusing is that that the Sony Ericsson LT28i delivered a much, much lower score on the same benchmark (2443 versus 6240 for the LT28at). If the LT28at and LT28i are very different phones (as the benchies suggest), why are the model numbers so similar? If you look at the Xperia PLAY it has a consistent model number (R800i, R800a, R800x, R800at) across variants. We’re still scratching our head on this discrepancy, but we hope it all becomes clear soon.

Via AnTuTu & Xperiablog

Sony Ericsson Xperia duo leaks again, launch rumored to be scheduled for September

Okay, it may be only a press shot and not a photo of the real deal in action, but this is clearly the best image of the Sony Ericsson Xperia duo that we have to date. The smartphone looks pretty much identical to the unit seen in the last Xperia duo photos that we came across with the location of the sensors and the front-facing camera being the only visual difference.

According to the source, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Duo possibly uses the NovaThor A9500 chipset (The Nova A9500, built in 45 nm, uses a dual-core Cortex-A9 running at clock speeds of up to 1.2GHz, with Mali™ 400 improving graphics performance up to 20 percent, supporting full HD camcorder capabilities and up to 20 megapixel cameras. It is sampling and in design with ST-Ericsson customers today), which combines a couple of Cortex A9 cores with the Mali-400 GPU. It's basically the same deal that you get with the Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II, except that this time the CPU clock is even higher. The other rumored scenario will see the Xperia Duo packing the Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon chipset, which is the one that powers the HTC Sensation.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia duo is expected to become the company's flagship device when it launches, and judging by its rumored tech specs, the smartphone is going to be quite a beast. First of all, it is said that this will be the first Sony Ericsson handset to have a dual-core chipset under its hood with the ST-Ericsson NovaThor A9500 , U8500 chips and the Quallcomm MSM8260 silicon being the most probable candidates. What is also rumored about the Sony Ericsson Xperia duo is that its chipset will tick at 1.4GHz and will be backed up by a whopping 1.5 gigabytes of RAM.

A 4.5-inch qHD display is very likely to shine on the smartphone's front side flavored with the Mobile BRAVIA Engine for better looking colors and enhanced contrast. Besides that, the Xperia duo is said to be getting a 12-megapixel camera with a second generation Exmor R CMOS sensor for taking great photos in low light conditions. Top everything off with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and a beefy 2500 mAh battery, and you get a smartphone that might very well land straight on top of the Android food chain.

Speculated specs

Specs suggested by Digi.tech include a 4.5-inch touch screen, 12MP camera, 1.4GHz dual-core processor, LED flash, 1080p video recording, 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of memory, with a 2500 mAh battery to complete the picture.

These specs sound a bit outlandish – more like a wishlist than an actual handset, particularly the 2500 mAh battery which is way bigger than anything else on the market at the moment.

So, should we put our faith in this lot of rumour fodder? The likelihood of there being a handset called the Xperia Duo is high. The likelihood that the leaked image of the handset is legit is low. A September release does sound reasonable, but are any of those specifications really accurate? We're not sure.

To sum up, it's all possible but it wouldn't be prudent to stake your life on it coming true.

It is said that the Sony Ericsson Xperia duo will launch as early as September of this year, but we suggest that you take this with a grain of salt for now. As you could imagine, it's way too early to talk about release dates or pricing yet. We are hoping, though that an official announcement will come in the next few weeks.