VAIO and Japan Communications Inc. have finally revealed the full details of the first ever VAIO Phone. Those, however, who have been eagerly awaiting the kind of phone that would come out of what was once Sony‘s PC business will most likely walk away with their heads down. The VAIO Phone, as it is named, bears a mix of mid-range specs paired with an almost high price tag that doesn’t seem to match. Furthermore, the design isn’t even VAIO’s own and it simply took one from an ODM that is already used by Panasonic.
The 5-inch smartphone at least has a 1280×720 display, which could be worse. And at least it has 2 GB of RAM which qualifies it to join the mid-tier party. The 16 GB storage might be enough in light of that. But the most curious piece of this puzzle is the CPU, a 1.2 GHz quad-core 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 410. While we’re not surprised not to see an 810, a 610 would have been ideal. The 400 series has been more or less designed for the lower end spectrum, though admittedly higher than a 200 series. Nonetheless, it’s a strange decision. Another interesting bit is the software. While it does run on Android 5.0, thankfully, VAIO qualifies it as 32-bit. Given that the CPU is 64-bit, it’s a strange thing to point out. Then again, with only 2 GB of RAM, it doesn’t really make much of a difference as far as memory addressing is concerned.
VAIO’s first laptops and tablets bore the same design language back when Sony still held the brand, so perhaps there was an expectation that its first smartphone would as well. Sadly, that is not the case. In fact, VAIO didn’t design the smartphone. It used a white label smartphone from an ODM named Quanta. The amusing thing about that is that the exact same smartphone is used by Panasonic for its own Eluga U2 that, naturally, has the exact same specs as well.
VAIO is selling the VAIO Phone for 51,000 yen, which is around $421, which might leave some scratching their heads in disbelief. For the sake of comparison, those same specs on the Panasonic Eluga U2 costs 7,685 NTD, which is almost half the price at $243.
SOURCE: JCI (1), (2)
VIA: rbmen
