The upcoming smartphone from Sony might get the name Xperia Sola. It’s contradictory to the single alphabet naming procedure of Sony that we saw in Xperia S and the rumored Xperia U and Xperia P. Xperia Sola has been trademarked with OHIM and USPTO. These are the trademarking offices of EU and United States respectively.

As you might have guessed, there are no details about the specifications of the phone or any pictures available; may be we’ll hear something about it in the MWC 2012. If you’re interested to know more about the other rumored handsets, it’s here.

USPTO

OHIM

Source: Xperiablog

It is the first day of february and I thought of reminding you all about the major event of this month. It’s the MWC 2012 which is to commence from 27 February 2012 in Barcelona. So, what to expect from Sony? New Xperias? Yes, it’s evident from this invitation letter from Sony Ericsson:

“Find out what’s new and what’s next! Join us at our Press Conference at Mobile World Congress for the latest news on our Xperia smartphone portfolio and strategy.”

There are rumours about some phones that would be announced by Sony. There are no official statements regarding any of those phones but we get a lot of details in the form of leaked pictures and benchmark results. We have reported them here and to them who had no time to look into it, I’d like to gather everything here.

Among the rumored phones, the most desirable and eye catching one is the LT22i ‘Nypon’ (Xperia P). It’s one among the phones expected to be announced in the event.

LT22i ‘Nypon’ Specsheet:

• 1.0 GHz Dual-Core Processor
• ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500 Platform
• 1GB RAM
• 4.0-inch (540 x 960 resolution) display
• 8.1MP (1080p video recording) Exmor R back-illuminated sensor with LED Flash
• Gingerbread (2.3.7)

Another interesting phone is the MT27i ‘Pepper’.

MT27i ‘Pepper’ Specsheet:

• 1GHz dual-core processor
• ARM Mali-400 MP GPU ST-Ericsson chipset
• 5MP camera
• 3.7-inch (480×854) display
• Sealed battery

Yet another one with some decent configuration and is highly expected to be announced in the event is the ST25i ‘Kumquat’. (Xperia U)

ST25i ‘Kumquat’ Specsheet:

• 1GHz dual-core processor
• 3.5-inch qHD display with Bravia Engine
• 5-megapixel rear camera with Exmor R, 720p HD video recording
• Gingerbread (Ice Cream Sandwich update later)

Also, we have the details of a mid range phone which could be possibly the successor of Xperia X8; that is the ST21i ‘Tapioca’.

ST21i ‘Tapioca’ Specsheet:

• 800MHz processor
• 3.2-inch display with 320 x 480 pixel resolution
• 512MB RAM, 4GB ROM
• 3.2MP camera
• Android Gingerbread

And then we have a list of another 6 phones with their price and expected launch dates, but we know little about their hardware or software. We don’t have any pictures either.

Also, there were talks about LT28at/LT28i; the ‘at’ version for US and ‘i’ for the rest of the world. Sadly there is no mentioning of this phone in the price list and hence concluded that it doesn’t exist or it’s already released as the Xperia ion (for the US) and Xperia S (Worldwide).

For now these are all rumors and what is real is the event itself and the fact that Sony is a part of it. On the other hand there are no reasons why you shouldn’t believe the existence of these phones. Sadly, you have to wait 25 days more to get to a conclusion.

Most of us don’t bother this. Once the phones are launched, we analyse and judge it. But for the real hardcore Sony Ericsson fans out there, the wait is painful, especially when they loose their sleep on “Will that be a dual core…?” or “Will it be affordable?” or “Will it have a nice cam” and so on!

Leaked Pictures of Pepper, Kumquat and Nypon:

Heard of the Sony tablets? We are not going to discuss anything about the tablets here, but I guess you noticed the names,Tablet S and Tablet P. It looks like since the the take over of Sony Ericsson, Sony decided to follow the same single alphabet naming procedure with their smartphones as well. The first Sony Xperia was named Xperia S (release in March 2012). There are rumors about ST25i ‘Kumquat‘ to get the name Xperia U and now we have another. This time it is LT22i ‘Nypon’.

Details emerge from the same source; and that is the Indonesian Telecoms Regulatory body. They claim that the LT22i Nypon will be called Xperia P on release.

LT22i ‘Nypon’ details:

• 1.0 GHz Dual-Core Processor
• ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500 Platform
• 1GB RAM
• 4.0-inch (540 x 960 resolution) WhiteMagic display
• 8.1MP (1080p video recording) Exmor R back-illuminated sensor with LED Flash
• Android Gingerbread (2.3.7)

Source: Xperiablog

We have been hearing a lot about ST25i Kumquat these days and details regarding this phone emerges each day. Now there is another reason to believe its existence in the Sony labs. The information is from the Indonesian Postel website (the site represents the Indonesian Telecoms Regulatory body). In the list, we see a mysterious entry ‘Sony Ericsson Xperia U ST25i‘. If it was before the official announcement of Xperia S that this news emerged, I wouldn’t have bothered to lend my eyes on this piece of information because no companies bother to name their product like this!

It’s funny but this is going to be real:

In the Shop:

‘Hey, I want an S.’

‘A what?!’

‘Yeah, S.’

‘Oh, I get it, What about U? It’s cheaper.’

‘U?!’

‘Yeah U, the dual core thing with a downgraded camera. And we have more coming in a couple of months like the Q, R, T etc.‘

I don’t know how many more alphabets are reserved by Sony! The sales may be a tough job for Sony Ericsson but it seems the smartphone naming procedure is an extremely easy job!

source: xperiablog

Sony Ericsson has released only two phones running on Windows platform; the Xperia X1 and X2 (in 2010). Since then, it was like the company abandoned their projects on Windows Phones. In March 2011 news emerged from unofficial sources that Sony Ericsson would release the next set of Windows phones. There were also pictures of the prototype version of the phone leaked. Anyway, there are no phones released till date. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson also commented on these rumors. They didn’t make an official statement in their blogs. In an interview to a news channel here in India, a Sony Ericsson Executive mentioned that there are no plans to release a Windows phone in the near future even though they have not abandoned Windows development.

Sony Ericsson seems highly interested on developing on Android platform and they do believe that their sales highly depend on android phones:

“…throughout 2011 we’ve shifted our business from feature phones to smartphones, and our Android-based smartphone sales in the quarter increased by 65% year-on-year.“

-Bert Nordberg, President and CEO of Sony Ericsson

Anyway, pictures keep coming. Now we have the recent set of pictures that shows a Windows phone from Sony Ericsson. It’s a QWERTY phone running on WP7 or WP 7.5.

source: xperiablog

First we had the Xperia arc, then its compact version; the Xperia ray. Now we have the Xperia S and there is a compact version for Xperia S too? The recent picture of the rumored ST25i Kumquat seems to take this honor.

Details of Kumquat (ST25)

1GHz dual-core processor

3.5-inch Reality display with Bravia Engine

5MP camera with Exmor R, 720p HD video recording

Android Gingerbread (Ice Cream Sandwich update later)

As more and more pictures of the phone appears in the wild, we are forced to believe its existence and an official announcement at MWC 2012.

source : xperiablog

Some of the phones mentioned are familiar to us, like the ST25i Kumquat, LT22i Nypon, MT27i Pepper and ST21 Tapioca but the rest of the phones are unfamiliar; there had not been any information available regarding them in the past.

Prices and Launch dates:

The majority of them will be launched in MWC 2012.

source: gsmarena

Following on from the official announcement of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) on SE’s Xperia 2011 range, we now are starting to see a couple of rumours fly when we will get the newest version of Android will hit our handsets.

The first date came from SE Italy, via a reply on their Facebook page by Maurizio De Palma, the Head of Marketing for SE Italy, saying that the update should arrive by March 2012. As pointed out by our source, this would normally be within the release of a flagship phone (at this time of writing, expected to be the much rumoured Xperia Nozomi) based on the past two years (Xperia X10 and Xperia Arc)

However, just to throw another spanner into the works, a Sony employee has tweeted some comments about Ice Cream Sandwich and suggests a date of the first week of January 2012, but finds it rather confusing with the March date being mentioned. He also said that SE are working on a “skinless” version of ICS and that there is a chance of getting Android 2.3.4 to the X10 etc Personally though I wouldn’t get your hopes up about the latter.

It is nice to see some rumours about when we will get the update. However I would still prefer an official announcement, and it kept to.

The fact that the Sony employee is talking about a “skinless version of ICS” does puzzle me though. Recently I brought the Xperia Pro, and, going through the (generic) user guide for Android 2.3.4, it seems to match it pretty much apart from the Facebook Inside Xperia. I can’t honestly see SE ditching Facebook Inside Xperia, unless Google have forced them to. Anyway, speaking of the Xperia Pro, I will be posting a review of it soon.

As for the current rumoured dates; lets take those as a pinch of salt. I can’t see SE giving away ICS for its current platform before its even released its new range yet, with we hope ICS on it already. I suspect the update will be delivered in late Q1 or early Q2. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t mind having it in January or March though.

Source for the January date: XperiaBlog

We already talked about it here. The rumour was it will be called Xperia Duo.
Now few things changed from then.

It will be driven by snapdragon 1.5GHz(MSM8660) dual core processor, with help of 1GB RAM, although as you may notice, images shows only 691MB. It’s jet to be seen how many MB of RAM will it have. It also has a 4.3″ screen with amazing resolution of 720 by 1280, which gives 320dpi. You will have 32GB of storage for keeping your data, unfortunately without memory card option.
And all that will be powered with 1750mAh battery.

More rumours also suggest that this will be first Sony Ericsson phone to be used with micro-SIM and will have NFC. Of course, the exception being the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arco, which is released only in Japan and is their only model with an NFC chip.

All this specifications are maybe the reason they called it Nozomi, which is also used for fastest train service in Japan.
Here are few pictures of the phone itself:

Also on next picture you can see NenaMark1 results for Nozomi:

Sources:
XperiaBlog facebook page
iandroid

The proof came from NenaMark1 benchmark where an anonymous user posted up a score of 46.8fps and revealed the processor speed as 1.4GHz and GPU as the Adreno 205.
That means it scores 2fps more than the Xperia Arc (44.8fps) and has the same GPU as the Xperia Arc and just a more powerfull CPU. 1.4GHz on the LT18i compared to 1GHz on the LT15i (Arc).
This could even be the same single-core Snapdragon S2 chipset (MSM8655T) that is rumoured to be used in the Nozomi.

We believe that the LT18i Ayame will be quite similar to the Xperia Arc.
Question to you folks, would you upgrade from your Xperia Arc?

Screenshot of the benchmark:

Source: XPERIA Blog