Hardware

The Sony Xperia U is pretty much identical to the Xperia S, sharing the same design but in a smaller chassis. That hard plastic makes a return, although the back feels soft to the touch and is resistant to fingerprints and smudges. The 3.5-inch screen has a 854×480 resolution, and spec wise you’re looking at a NovaThor U8500 dual-core 1Ghz processor with Mali-400MP GPU, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, and five megapixel camera with 720p.

Before you get too excited at the mention of a Mali GPU, remember that this is a slower version of what’s found in the Galaxy S II and other phones, so don’t expect anywhere near the performance. The other piece of bad news is that the phone only comes with 4GB of storage, and there’s no microSD card slot. That’s pretty bad, and you’ll run into problems extremely quickly even if you just add music to the phone. The upside is that USB OTG does function properly, so you’re not completely stuck, but having a USB cable dangle off your phone for extra storage is hardly an ideal solution.

The display on the Xperia U is a mixed bag. It’s plenty bright, and the viewing angles are generally decent, but tip the phone past a certain point and you can invert the image being displayed. There are three problems with the screen, though. First, there’s no oleophobic coating. That means you’re going to be looking at a very messy screen very quickly, and it’s hard to clean properly without a dedicated cloth. Second, if you’re particularly sensitive to screen quality then you’ll be able to notice the strange texture and odd colorization of the display on light colored backgrounds. Finally, you can see the digitizer grid just below the screen when shifting the phone against certain colors like yellow and white.

microUSB is found on the left side of the phone, and power, volume rocker, and a dedicated camera key are on the right. The 3.5mm headphone jack and microphone are on top, and another mic is located on the bottom. Speaking of the bottom, the cap can be removed and replaced with different color covers. All we have to say to this is: why? Otherwise you’re looking at the same clear antenna strip that you’ll find on the Xperia P and the Xperia S, which also lights up on certain notifications and alerts. You can change the color the strip using the different Themes that Sony provides in the Android settings.

Software

Just like the P and the S, the Xperia U ships with Gingerbread instead of Android’s latest and great, Ice Cream Sandwich. Sony has promised an update for the handset in the future, but it’s still disheartening to see ICS missing. If you’re familiar with the software modifications that Sony has made to previous Android handsets, then you pretty much know the score with the U as well.

There is a little bit of bloatware bundled with the device – McAfee, OfficeSuite, WisePilot – and a few other included apps like WhatsApp and Astro File Manager. All of them can be uninstalled without any issues, allowing you to claw back some of that precious 4GB. Otherwise, expect to see Sony’s own apps, including Music Unlimited, Video Unlimited, Track ID, Media Remote, and Play Now, which is Sony’s app store. There isn’t anything too exciting on there, with a lot of apps carried across from the Play Store.

The software keyboard looks daunting at first given the small size of the display, but we didn’t have too much trouble with it. Mistakes were few and far between, although the keyboard did lag on occasion with haptic feedback left on. We personally didn’t have any issues despite the horizontal resolution, although those with larger digits may struggle.

Performance and Benchmarks

Sony has managed to achieve quite a feat with the Xperia U, slotting a NovaThor U8500 dual-core 1Ghz processor and a slower Mali-400MP GPU into the device. General performance is good too: flicking around homescreens and through apps is smooth, with very few instances of stutter or lag. Web browsing is good too, with pinch-to-zoom and double tapping resulting in smooth transitions. The phone did have to catch its breath occasionally on heavier webpages, or those with Flash, but overall we’d say it performed admirably.

Benchmarks seem to back that up too. It doesn’t blow the doors off by any means, but it does seem to be beating everything in this price category. Quadrant gave us a result of 2204, SunSpider 0.9.1 achieved 2526ms, AnTuTu returned 5359, and NeNaMark 2 scored 29.2fps.

Camera

The five megapixel on the Xperia U is decidedly middle of the road. It can take some nice photos in the right circumstances, with good colors and detail, but noise reduction seems to be ever present in photos. In good lighting conditions, it’s not too much of an issue, with only occasional splotches as minor noise is dealt with. In poorer conditions, however, the noise reduction ramp up, smearing images and taking detail out along with the noise. Otherwise, we didn’t have any major complaints. It’s a competent shooter, just don’t expect miracles.

Taking photos is a bit tricker. The two-stage dedicated camera key on the side of the phone seems awkward to use, with the first press being a little too light, and too much effort needed to press the button all the way down to take the photo. Tap-to-focus is missing in the camera app too, so if you want to focus and meter the shot before you take one you’ll have to hold down either the on-screen camera key or task a risk with the physical button.

The 720p video recording, however, is horrendous. The H.264 Baseline L3.1 clips have an average bitrate of around 6Mbit/s, but you wouldn’t know it. Clips are filled with compressions artifacts, with textures obliterated and scenery swimming in macroblocks. Sharpening creates awful halos around the edges of objects, and the jelly effect is in full force, so any quick panning or fast moving vehicles will result in distortion.

Battery

The 1,290mAh battery sounds small, but its definitely a champ when it comes ot performance. A video battery rundown test took a 720p H.264 High Profile L3.1 with AAC video and played it on loop with screen brightness set to 100%, and headphone volume set to 50%. After 4 hours and 37 minutes, the phone automatically shut down.

In typical usage, the Xperia U can easily get through a full day, and if you’re a light user, you’d be able to push two without any issues. Our usage is admittedly light, with only one push email account, some WhatsApp/texting, and occasional browsing, but even heavier users won’t have any problems getting through a full working day.

Wrap-Up

The Xperia U sounds like a very average device: it doesn’t do anything particularly well, but it’s not a bad phone at the same time. What makes the phone interesting is the price point that Sony is hitting. Three UK offer the phone for £180, which brings it in cheaper than the HTC One V while offering a slightly higher screen resolution and faster processor. There really aren’t any phones around that price point that have a dual-core processor either.

Having said all that, there are some niggling issues that will irritate some users. The display is the big one, and while I imagine most people will be perfectly content with the screen, others will be frustrated once they notice the panel funk and digitizer grid. Kudos to Sony for blessing the phone with a sensible 854×480 resolution when so many other phones in this bracket don’t even match that, but otherwise the HTC One V’s display is much, much better.

If you’re on a tight budget but want the best performance your money can buy, the Sony Xperia U is a safe choice. Users need to be wary about the lack of storage space, however, as 4GB will disappear very quickly, and if you can stretch your budget just a little bit more, the HTC One V has more going for it despite the single-core processor.

With a 4.3-inch HD display, a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and a 12 megapixel camera this is one of Sony’s top tier phones, if not their current flagship. Many bought the phone hoping ICS was coming soon and now you’ll be getting your wish. According to what we’ve heard Sony will be updating the Xperia S to Android 4.0 ICS later this month or in early June. So you can expect to see the update within the next 3-4 weeks.

With no Ericsson around and this being purely a Sony branded device they are at least headed in the right direction in terms of specs, hardware, and now software. Sony has some impressive smartphone and hopefully they’ll start to compete better with HTC and Samsung, especially here in the US. For now users of the impressive Xperia S will have to wait just a few more weeks and they’ll be able to enjoy the frozen treat of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Let us know when you receive the update via the tips at the top of the page.

[via SlashGear]

The Tapioca and Hayabusa both should be released sometime in July if this leak is accurate, and now that both are starting to appear things could be right on time. The spec’s are reported to be pretty low-end just like previous reports for this Xperia. Coming with a 3.2-inch screen, an 800 MHz single-core processor and only 512MB of ram this will be for the budget crowd, that is for sure. At least it comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich though right?

Looking at the picture provided it surely has a bulky design and they are cutting some corners on design to probably make this as budget-friendly as possible. With the odd design it could also have a keyboard under the display, or as the leaked roadmap linked to above suggests — a Tapioca DS (dual-screen). Until we see more leaks we’ll have to wait and wonder, but we might be seeing a dual-screen budget phone from Sony in the coming weeks or months.

[via PocketNow]

Today Sony has updated the Sony Mobile Blog basically stating that the updates are going smoothly, everything is on track, and the updates will continue to roll out globally as fast as they can. Sony is still working with the various carriers and networks but expects things to continue at a rapid pace.

Phones like the Xperia arc S, ray, neo V, and others are all seeing the updates in Nordic countries and the Netherlands, and more are coming soon. Sony reminds us the update must be completed on a PC, not over the air, by going to sonymobile.com/update when the updates are available. So basically we learned nothing new from Sony, no ETA’s or time-frames were given, but they did supply the neat ICS picture shown above.

Stay tuned for more details as the Sony Xperia line updates are coming soon to a handset near you.

True to their word, Sony has begun issuing Ice Cream Sandwich updates for its Xperia line in their final forms. The first phones to get Android 4.0 are the Xperia arc S, Xperia neo V and Xperia ray (which make may Shift key feel neglected each time I write about them). Right now the updates are limited to northern Europe: Demark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. According to Sony’s official blog post, these three phones will get updates around the globe over the next six weeks.

The arc S, neo V and ray phones were the first to get Sony’s official beta releases of Android 4.0, surprisingly released to developers and the public directly from Sony’s website. This kind of openness and commitment to appeasing power users is rare – and commendable. Sony’s also promised to upgrade each and every Xperia phone released last year to Ice Cream Sandwich, something that can’t be said for any other phone company that we know of. Sony might be a little late to the Ice Cream party, but they’re bringing the favors for sure. If you’re waiting on an update for these three phones but don’t live in one of the Nordic countries, give the beta a try.

The flagship Xperia S shouldn’t be too far behind, so you can expect its update to start coming out in the next few weeks. According to Sony’s previous posts, they should have all of their phones updated sometime this summer, presumably in all territories. Sony’s taking a unique approach to Ice Cream Sandwich updates: you won’t see them appear as an over-the-air alert, like most updates. Instead you’ll need to manually download the software from Sony’s update page, which you can find here.

[via DroidGamers]

As for both models, and including the Xperia S, we’ll find they’ll ship with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). If that’s a ‘deal-breaker’ for you, then san update to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) should be ready and rolled out by Q2 of 2012. Most noticeable from each of these devices is the transparent strip found near the base of each. There resides the phone’s antenna, and it will also pulse as a notification LED.

It will be nice to see how customers like its transparency. After handling the Xperia S at CES this year, it looked and felt great. Be sure to check out our hands on with both the Xperia P and Xperia U. You’ll notice that between all three, only the color and sizes differ.

[via PocketNow]

We got an early hands-on with the ion and Xperia S at CES but this video shows a few things that weren’t present last month. The video highlights several key features including all new home screen, lock screen, FM radio, music player, gallery and widgets like you see at the beginning. Check it out, they even show some awesome 3D-type SPB shell stuff at the end. If you liked Sony’s Timescape UI before, you’ll love what is coming next.

Thoughts? Looks beautiful doesn’t it? Sony hasn’t been extremely popular here in the states but other regions have seen strong sales. With Sony looking to gain an edge in the mobile landscape and buying out Ericsson’s half we are hoping for some strong phones and awesome devices to follow. With a sharp UI and impressive widget effects like those shown on video — they are well on their way. It’s safe to assume many of the 2011 Sony Ericsson devices will be updated with this new UI but we can’t say for sure.

Installation couldn’t be simpler, though you do have to have a rooted phone in order to apply the software, and it only applies to phones that have been updated to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Download the free app from the Android Market, run the CWM installer and reboot your phone – bingo bango, instant mod time. Alternately, you can download the app from the original thread and install it via the standard non-Market method.

The other options included in the app follow the pattern established by ROM Manager, the official ClockworkMod Recovery app. You can reboot directly into recovery, make an automatic Nandroid backup via the app, and check your root status. This is a major boon for those who have a less popular phone that hasn’t made its way into the official support list yet. The app is now on its fourth revision, so most of the kinks have been worked out already.

Oh, and there’s a Nyan Cat in the background. Nice.

The deal will mark the end of a partnership that’s been going for ten years – but hasn’t been going all that strong lately. Sony Ericsson’s smartphones have seen only limited success in Europe and Asia, and are rare in the United States. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA Play is probably the company’s most well-known Android handset, thanks to its PlayStation integration. And the forthcoming XPERIA Ion, a local variant of the international XPERIA S, is the only high-profile Sony Ericsson product to find a home on an American carrier in months. The company announced losses of $318 million in their 4th quarter 2011 earnings report.

The XPERIA Ion and XPERIA S are likely to be the last flagship devices produced under the Sony Ericsson label, as the re-branding and absorption process is expected to be complete by late summer. Impressively, Sony has committed to updating every Xperia phone produced in 2011 to Ice Cream Sandwich, and even laid out late Spring timetables for the various models. That’s a good way to start building more brand loyalty. Sony announced an ambitious cloud directive for all of its consumer products at CES, covering mobile, gaming, HDTV (including Google TV) and PCs. Expect to hear a lot about integration across their various platforms as the acquisition is finalized.

[via SlashGear]

However, as you can see – the LT22i ‘Nypon’ is sporting three physical buttons. From the right photo, the curved shape leads one to believe it may pack quite the battery. Official specs are completely absent for this device, so there’s clue how the Nypon compares to the likes of the XPERIA S or even the newly named XPERIA U.

And then there’s the Sony Tapioca; a lower tier smartphone in Sony’s lineup. This smaller device is supposedly carrying a 3.2″ HVGA display, and running a currently unknown 800MHz processor. It is also said to have 4GB of internal storage, and 512MB RAM – so don’t expect the Tapioca to fly as fast as the others. We should see the device sometime around July.

[via AndroidGuys]

Other than the announcement at CES and us knowing it will be released sometime in Q2 we don’t have any other details or pricing information at the moment from our friends at Sony or AT&T other than “coming soon”. According to popular online retailer Negri Electronics you can get the fully unlocked version for only $569.

That $570 will get you an impressive smartphone with a 4.6″ HD display powered by Sony’s BRAVIA engine. A 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and a huge 12 megapixel camera for 1080p video and more. Not to mention this phone has HDMI out and AT&T 4G LTE. Basically it could put the Galaxy Nexus to shame but I’ll hold off on my judgement til I get some hands-on time — although we already know the camera will be a heck of a lot better. It also appears if you take this unlocked phone outside the US you’ll get more than 2G speeds from the 2100 Mhz bands on board too.

We’ll update once we see or hear more details on the Xperia ION.

[via PocketNow]

The recently leaked roadmap (linked to below) is to be believed then this would be one of the upcoming new devices although nothing has been confirmed. The obvious smaller screen on the image shown above is a clear indicator that not only is this not the Xperia S, but it also has a lower resolution screen by the large icons. According to Xperia Blog the leaked device above will be 3.5″ and have an 854 x 480 resolution.

The Sony ST25i will also sport a 1.0 GHz dual-core processor and have a 5 megapixel camera around back. Looking at the sheer size of the phone in the leaked photo you can see it’s not much larger than Xperia ray we reviewed late last year. This should come in as another mid-range phone for Sony Ericsson, something we’ve seen plenty from them already. Which apparently isn’t holding them over too well given their recent reports of huge Q4 losses of over 318 million.

Either way with this leak, and others we’ve seen over the past week most of these devices will be on display at MWC 2012 in Barcelona and we will get all the details live in Spain.

[via Pocket Now]

I say “new take on Android” for a few reasons. One being that Sony Ericsson has just sold their 50% to SONY giving the technology and electronics giant full control. Sony has recently announced that they’ll be going all in with Android in 2012 and plan to have a much better showing. Most devices from Sony Ericsson throughout 2011 were always slightly under the competition in terms of raw performance and hardware — although they do have impressive cameras.

Another factor could be the lack of traction in the US markets although SE phones were popular elsewhere in the world. Many of their devices just as I mentioned above fell short to the competition because they lacked the new specs the others had. Such as dual-core processors, larger displays, and HD screens. We reviewed the Xperia ray and while it was nice — I’d never own one. 2012 however shows a lot of promise for Sony. As they showed off the Xperia S and the ION at CES (links below) and we’ve recently seen a roadmap detailing 11 new smartphones for 2012 from Sony — many of which look to be high end devices such as the Hayabusa and MINT.

Sony Ericsson will announce their full report later this month and most likely it will look just as grim. I have a feeling they are patiently waiting for that $1.47 billion dollar payout and giving the reigns to Sony for good.

[via SlashGear]

The image above leaked last week is believed to be the Sony Ericsson Pepper, and now benchmarks today have confirmed the specs that were already being suspected. We have a 3.7″ 854 x 480 resolution display with a single-core 1.0 GHz processor and Mali 400 for graphics. Nothing special here but definitely a great little device for the budget friendly crowd. Here is the benchmark result:

While Pepper is only a codename, we are hearing this device will actually be the successor to the popular Xperia Neo that was released last year. The Pepper will also feature a 5 megapixel camera capable of 720p video. Earlier today Sony’s entire 2012 roadmap was leaked — slating the Pepper for an early April release for around 300 Euros. While nothing has been confirmed at this point, we’ll most likely be seeing this little guy come end of February at Mobile World Congress in Spain.

[via PocketNow]

Sony recently bought Ericsson’s 50% of the company and have also said they’ll be going “all in” with Android in 2012. All of the above phones will run on Android and will receive different names on launch as these are internal codenames. First off the Nozomi, which isn’t listed as it was announced at CES as the Sony Xperia S (see our hands-on below). It will be priced at €462 to give you an idea of its caliber and what we see listed. It’s fair to assume with that pricing that some of those higher priced devices will be flagship phones from Sony.

We aren’t sure what all will come to the US or not as this is only an early leak (or rumor) but Sony has been trying to tap into the US market more as of late. The Kumquat and Nypon we’ve heard before but details are still scant. On the other hand the others are all new to us here at Android Community. I’m particularly interested in the Hayabusa. For one their motorcycles are blazing fast, have style, and are unique. And two, because it has a beefy price along the lines of the Xperia S.

The rest seem to be priced differently to hit different levels of the smartphone market. Then we also have that MINT being the most expensive on the list. This could be their next big thing and is slated for a September release. The last thing I want to mention is the Tapioca_DS. Could this be dual-screen? or maybe dual-sim. Either way they have two Tapioca phones listed.

It’s safe to assume we’ll see the top 3 all slated for an April release at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Spain late next month. We’ll be there live to capture all the details so stay tuned.

The teaser video seriously doesn’t reveal much other than some sort of universal infrared or other powered remote control system — being demoed on a Sony Ericsson Xperia handset shown in the image above. This appears to be a very simple application that will power on and control things like TV’s, music players, an old gramophone and more but they show it off in a different light then you’d expect. Check out the video so you can be as confused as I am.

You can see they aim the Xperia handset towards each device making us believe this is a Infrared type system but it really could be anything. The user interface appears to only be a “dot” on the screen for simple on/off toggle or switching these devices on but that is about all it reveals. According to the splash at the end this “new entertainment” will be announced on February 21st — a day before the Sony PS Vita. IR isn’t too popular on US handsets but many of Sony’s other markets have the feature so we aren’t fully sure what to expect — but will be sure to follow along for more details.

[via SlashGear]

Both have NFC, HDMI outputs capable of 1080p Full HD video, and 12-megapixel main cameras that can record Full HD too. Front-facing 1.3-megapixel cameras are used for video calls and vanity shots, and there’s the usual WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS along with Sony’s Timescape interface.

Sony Xperia ion hands-on:

Sony also revealed some compact NFC tags, which can be used to launch apps or to instantly switch the Xperia handsets into different preset modes; you could have one on your nightstand, for instance, and automatically toggle the smartphone into silent mode before bed. The Xperia ion will arrive on AT&T sometime in Q2, while the Xperia S will arrive in the same quarter on various carriers. No pricing as yet.

More information in our full Xperia ion hands-on and Xperia S hands-on over at SlashGear.

While this all will be unveiled next week we can sit and wonder right? The earlier images from Sony (linked to below) suggested a possible Windows Phone device, but they’ve previously stated to be going “all in” with Android. The leaked images we’ve recently seen of the Arc HD (Nozomi) could have been prototypes that have since been redesigned — or the image above from Sony themselves is an entirely different device. The Arc HD leaks show the camera and flash both to be centered on the rear of the phone and the image above is clearly different.

We have a feeling Sony Ericsson will have multiple new devices on display at CES and we will be sure to capture them all on video to show our readers. With Sony buying Ericsson’s half and aiming to hit Android hard in 2012 we expect big things from team SONY. The image above comes straight from the Sony Ericsson Facebook page and hints of at least one Xperia device at CES. Stay tuned for more details all coming in early next week.

[via PocketNow]

Included will be the XPERIA Live, Pro, and Active; to access the files directly visit the CyanogenMod mirror network here, and navigate to your device. Do note, that you must have root access and CWM recovery installed to make use of the files – but those of you following this far into the post probably already knew that. These new CM builds will most likely be very unstable, as this will be their first nightly.

But over time, it will undoubtedly become just as polished as other officially supported devices. This is not CM9 running off of an Android 4.0 base, but rather CM7 running off of Gingerbread. So those of you hoping to see ICS may just have to wait it out a good bit longer.

[via Android Police]

This is actually a pretty great added bonus for Xperia owners and I can imagine a few people are happy to hear the news. Sadly there is a small catch and this isn’t available for everyone. This deal or freebie actually only applies to France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the UK and Australia. We could see more added later but for now that is all we get. Hopefully Sony will open this up for all their users.

The image above shows the dates and more information but basically if you purchase or own an Xperia device from November 1st to January 31st 2012 you are eligible for this deal. We aren’t sure if this has been available since the first of November or if Sony is just offering this to a wider audience of buyers. Sony’s Music Unlimited is a great service and getting 90 days free will give many a first hand look at what their missing — although things like Spotify are a great alternative too. Head down to Sony Ericsson to get started if this applies to you and your Xperia.

[via Phandroid]