News - Sony announces stylish new Xperia S, P and U smartphones

[HEXUS]

Plans to launch largest ad-campaign in 'many years' to support its new devices.

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[keithwalton]

Xperia S is still looking like the favourite to replace my galaxy s in a months time. The clockspeed is good on the chip just a shame really it's the 40nm chip and not the 28nm chip of the same spec

[Biscuit]

they look fantastic!

[crossy]

they look fantastic!

Don't agree at all - compared to the Arc/ArcS and heck, even my two year old X10, they're dog ugly. Apart from the notification band (which I quite like) they look too much like the iPhone4/4S - aka "pocket slabs". I much prefer the "sculpted curves" of the older models.

No expandable storage and - more importantly - fixed battery (reputedly) means that unless that screen is really, really good, then I'm going to pass.

Question: the Xperia U picture seems to show that the back (and one side) of the phone below the notification band is a different colour to the rest. Was this a genuine production/demo model or just a mock up?
EDIT: Oops - just noticed the bit in the text saying that the Xperia U has an "interchangeable bottom cover". I must read things more carefully!

[Biscuit]

At a glace they do bare a resemblance, but its the common situation where things are always likely to look alike when they are minimal bevel and buttons with a massive screen. If you look a bit closer they have put some nice subtle curves in the back panel, added to the silver ring i think they look quite classy.

I dont think i would buy one but i would still like to see one in the flesh and have a play around with one.

[cheesemp]

I was really getting annoyed about the lack of mSD slots and replaceable battery in the new Xperia's and I can see its not going to change... I did read this interesting article on SD cards slowing mobiles (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224352/Slow_smartphone_It_s_not_the_network_it_s_NAND_flash) so I think I can forgive the fixed memory size but the lack of replaceable battery I can't. I've had to replace the battery in my X10 to get a day out of it once it reached 15 months old. With a 24 month contract I can't risk have to break the phone open to replace it. I've also had to hard reset by pulling the battery twice - something also impossible.

I have replaced the mSD card in my X10 but given the article above I guess I could go without next time.

[crossy]

If you look a bit closer they have put some nice subtle curves in the back panel, added to the silver ring i think they look quite classy. I dont think i would buy one but i would still like to see one in the flesh and have a play around with one.

True, true - especially that last part. I tend to slap silicone covers and screen protectors on my phones anyway but like I said, unless that screen is very, very good, then the drawbacks are going to outweigh the advantages in my mind.

Hopefully they'll have a good ICS implementation and Timescape won't end up being too much of a nuisance.

Plans to launch largest ad-campaign in 'many years' to support its new devices.

Never mind spending money on ad's, how about making sure this time around that they software support the Xperia's for a decent length of time? Joking aside, I'd have problems choosing a vendor that's noticeably better, and there's a whole lot (Motorola, LG, etc) who are demonstrably worse.

[keithwalton]

The original xperia's had relatively poor / out of date hardware when they were brand new (lack of ram and internal storage) which limited there upgrade potential and they tended to come out on old versions of android to boot.

The original was shocking in the way it didn't have much internal storage for apps, and was limited to android 2.1 which means you couldn't install apps on sd cards either.

The good news is they seem to have learned from there mistakes in using class leading hardware, almost up to date software (with the exception of the galaxy nexus, no one else is shipping or updated a phone to 4.0 yet)

They seem to have learned about support as well, they have been working with devs on xda providing alpha and beta builds of 4.0 for 2011 phones and have been helping cm9 devs fix bugs!

It's rare to have good aesthetics, hardware and software / community support in one device, just hope it has a decent hard reboot mode, as pulling batteries is quite common when running custom software.

Long term battery life is a little concern as my galaxy s is still doing ~4 days on a charge thanks to deep idle or 'didle' for short.

[crossy]

The original xperia's had relatively poor / out of date hardware when they were brand new (lack of ram and internal storage) which limited there upgrade potential and they tended to come out on old versions of android to boot. The original was shocking in the way it didn't have much internal storage for apps, and was limited to android 2.1 which means you couldn't install apps on sd cards either. The good news is they seem to have learned from there mistakes in using class leading hardware, almost up to date software (with the exception of the galaxy nexus, no one else is shipping or updated a phone to 4.0 yet)

Sorry, but what you're saying in the quoted section above contains some errors.

First off, the original Xperia (X10) had hardware that was in line with other devices around at the same time. And personally the screen has as good an image now as most of the non-AMOLED screens around at the moment.

Secondly, the X10 was not "limited to Android 2.1" - mine's been running a SonyEricsson generated (i.e. official!) Gingerbread ROM for some considerable time now. Which also means that it does App2SD just fine, which also deals with the "lack of internal storage" just fine.

Thirdly, I'd kind of argue that they're now using class leading hardware - where's their "all the rage" quad-core announcement for example, and still no (AM)OLED screens? It's only with the 2012 range that they've jumped to dual-core. Where they are good is in doing ICS - the beta came out a couple of days ago, so they're well on the way to a March/April launch for not only the phones shown at MWC, but also most of the gear from last year.

[keithwalton]

Didn't realise the X10 had been upgraded, i'd seen a lot of complaints about SE abandoning support for old phones.
The X10's hardware specs isn't bad for its time (comparable to the htc's), but the X8 is horrendous for an android phone, ditto to the X10 mini and X10 mini pro. For a while they were designing handsets around android 1.6 (and launching with that version) when 2.1 orientated devices were already out.

Quad core's are a bit of a fad with the A15 dual cores looking more promising. I am a big fan of amoled screens but I suspect this may look / work even better than the current pentile amoled's
RGBW will work better than RGRB. its also the smallest 720p panel so far.

I did mean that with the new phones that they will be using class leading hardware with the new screens and new cpu's these were really announced over a month ago and will be in the shops in a couple of weeks. Whilst the rest of the mwc launches will be late Q2/ early Q3.

I am a bit surprised that the big names are taking so long in rolling out ics, when amateur versions have been up and running across a wide variety of handsets for ages and have been mature enough to be considered a 'daily use' rom for sometime now.