With Sony’s rivals releasing thin and light smartphone designs with larger HD touchscreen displays and either powerful dual-core or quad-core processors, Sony is letting its Xperia lineup sit idly behind. A new Xperia flagship is being discussed by Chiense sources, which had a picture of the phone in the wild, called the Sony LT29i, codenamed Hayabusa.
The image, which shows the phone in a user’s hand, appears to have the Android navigation buttons moved onto the bottom portion of the screen, suggesting that the new Xperia flagship will be running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich at launch.
Other specs, according to Brief Mobile, that are said to accompany the phone include a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 ARM-based processor, 13-megapixel camera with a stacked sensor capabable of supporting HDR video functionality and ‘best-in-class low light performance,’ and a 4.55-inch HD Reality Display. All this will come in a package that will be about 7-mm thick.
According to the rumors, the phone may be announced in June and will be available to consumers in July. This new smartphone would replace the recently announced Sony Xperia S and Xperia Ion–both announced earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas–as the new flagship of the Xperia lineup.
It looks like smartphone-makers are focusing not on just thin and powerful designs for their smartphones, but also better camera performance. The trend was started by the iPhone, which demonstrated that the best camera is the one that you always have with you, and the popularity of iPhone photographs have started an overall trend in improving camera systems on smartphones. HTC recently revamped the cameras on its One series smartphones.
July needs to come earlier
Any idea what US carrier this could go to?