These are the exactly the same phones that Europeans have already played with, but the American pricing is new. If you fancy the current flagship model, the Xperia S, you’ll be paying $559.99 for the unlocked black or white version. The Xperia P, meanwhile, will set you back $479.99 with silver, red, and black options, and the Xperia U is the cheapest at $299.99, available in black and white.

Thinking about buying one and using it on T-Mobile? Unfortunately, you won’t have much luck. Sony lists the compatible HSPA bands for each model, with the Xperia S and Xperia P supporting 850/900/1900/2100, while the Xperia U only supports 850/1900/2100. If you still want to pick one of the NXT line for AT&T or one of its MVNOs, you hit up Sony’s online or retail stores, plus Newegg and “other online retailers.”

The Movies app stores any content you may have added yourself or purchased on the phone, but now pulls down album art from the internet as well as any relevant information, such as actors or plot. Album allows you to share photos out to Facebook, Picasa, and other online photo sharing services right from within the app. Walkman offers similar Facebook integration and downloads information directly from Gracenote.

Naturally, you’ll get all the regular benefits of Ice Cream Sandwich too, such as Face Unlock, a Settings icon in the app drawer, more customization options, and data consumption controls. The update is rolling out to Xperia S handsets right now over-the-air, so you don’t need to hook the phone up to a computer. All in all it comes in around 200MB, so you’ll probably want to make sure you’re connected to WiFi first.

The UI modifications that Sony has made to Android are still in full effect, but it looks like the company has tweaked a few things with the update. First, tapping on the home screen will pop up two icons in the top left and top right corners, allowing you to add new widgets The Clear button for notifications makes an appearance in the slide-down bar, as does the quick Settings button.

The most notable change seems to be to the music player, which has been renamed to Walkman. The UI has also been given a refresh, with a cleaner appearance and easier to use interface, plus a tweaked equalizer. Take a peek at the full five minute video below to try and spot the differences between Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread on the Xperia S.

[via Recombu]

Well, depending on the phone, anyway. Sony says on its blog that the first handsets to receive ICS in April will be the Xperia arc S, Xperia neo V and Xperia ray. The rollout will continue over four to six weeks. Unfortunately, there’s a longer wait for other handsets. The Xperia arc, Xperia PLAY, Xperia neo, Xperia mini, Xperia mini pro, Xperia pro, Xperia active and Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman won’t be seeing a tasty Ice Cream Sandwich treat until the end of May or beginning of June.

Sony also won’t be offering the update over 3G or WiFi: because it’s such a substantial upgrade, users will only be able to update using the PC Companion or Bridge for Mac. The phone that we’re most interested in receiving ICS, the Xperia S, didn’t get a narrower release date, instead still being saddled with an oh-so-vague “later part of the second quarter” timeline.

Even when the updates begin rolling out, they’ll most likely be for SIM free phones at first. Carriers need to spend time combing over software upgrades to make sure everything is kosher, so you may be looking at an additional delay there too.

[via MobileSyrup]

According to Ryan, there are a lot of robots each taking responsibility for different aspects of the smartphone experience: video, photos, music and more. Frankly we prefer that idea to the actual 1.5GHz dual-core processor Sony has used, though unfortunately neither robots nor phone runs Ice Cream Sandwich.

According to Sony Mobile CMO Steve Walker, early sales of the Xperia S have been “very positive” though the company hasn’t given any specific figures. In our own review we praised the 4.3-inch display and 12.1-megapixel camera, but Sony lost serious kudos by launching it with Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Whether Anderson’s commercial has the desired effect on would-be customers remains to be seen, and Sony isn’t saying whether the director will make a return and film a second. Let us know if you find it convincing enough to opt for a Sony handset in the comments.

[via TechCrunch]

The Sony Xperia S features a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1GB of RAM, and 32GB of data storage with up to 1.5GB of app storage. It has a 4.3-inch 1280 x 720 TFT pixel-dense display, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 12.1-megapixel rear-facing camera with 16x digital zoom, LED flash, and 1080p Full HD video recording. For more details on the device, make sure to check out our full review.

The device comes in black or white and features a unique transparent navigation bar that runs across the phone just below the screen. Sony hasn’t revealed the pricing and exact date of availability and is leaving that information for local retailers to announce soon. A US version is expected to arrive on AT&T and will be called the Xperia Ion, priced around $200-300. However, it will be missing the transparent element in the design.

[via Android Community]

Hardware

Unlike the LiveView, which was navigated by tapping touch-sensitive buttons around the edge of the bezel, the SmartWatch has a proper touchscreen. It’s a small one, mind, a 1.3-inch color OLED panel running at mere 128 x 128 resolution and supporting two-finger multitouch gestures. The only physical control is a power button on the right edge.

Most of the watch is plastic, which makes it pleasingly lightweight: the main unit itself is 36 x 26 x 8 mm and15.5g, and Sony bundles a rubbery watch-strap that adds 26g. It’s not as bulky as, say, the strap included with the WIMM One developer kit, but it’s still not going to be mistaken for anything approaching luxury. The SmartWatch itself has a spring-loaded clip on the back that attaches it to the strap or your coat/bag.

It’s also used with the proprietary charging system. Rather than accommodate a microUSB port, the SmartWatch uses a special USB cable terminating with a hooked end, that clips into place against charging terminals. It’s a clever approach, though it does mean you have to carry the cable if you want to be able to top the SmartWatch up on the move.

Inside there’s a Bluetooth 3.0 radio – not Bluetooth 4.0, which counts low-power connectivity as one of its primary benefits – and a non-accessible battery that Sony says is good for up to a week of “low usage” or a day of “heavy usage.” You also get a vibration alert and a tiny speaker for notifications.

Software

The SmartWatch’s interface is reasonably straightforward. It defaults to a clock screen – the time and date pulled from your smartphone – in blue characters on a black background – then wakes up to show persistent battery life, a slider graphic to show side-scrolling app icons, and the time. Four icons are shown on-screen at any one time.

Navigation through the menus and apps is via taps and swipes, and is generally – with one key annoyance – simple. What isn’t made obvious is the gesture to go back through the UI: a two-finger pinch. Unfortunately, the small size of the display makes this gesture feel cramped, and we’d rather have a single-touch motion do the same thing. There are also times when the buttons don’t make use of the full screen – the “View in Phone” button is a good example, only occupying a small slice of an otherwise empty display – which feels wasteful given it’s already a compact panel.

Sony SmartWatch hands-on:

The watch itself is only half the story, however. Your Android phone must be running Sony’s LiveWare app with the SmartWatch plugin installed – both are available free from the Play Market, and recent Sony handsets should have the former already installed. Obviously the apps support Sony’s range, but you can use certain third-party Android phones too. Sony has a list of those it has tested.

Unfortunately, the LiveWare app is somewhat frustrating in use. Selecting the SmartWatch from the accessory list – the same app is also used to trigger macros when, say, you plug the mains charger in – shows a list of possible functionality you can install to the watch itself: choosing one takes you to the Play Market, where they can be individually downloaded. After they install, there’s no new icon: instead you jump back into the LiveWare app to handle any of the basic settings.

As a system it works, but it’s far less streamlined than the in-app download store WIMM One has developed. The plus side is that you can install apps directly from the .APK file, though whether most users will benefit from that is questionable.

Performance

We tried the SmartWatch with both Sony’s own Xperia S – running Android 2.3 – and a Galaxy Nexus running Ice Cream Sandwich, the latter absent from the tested compatibility list. One of our main frustrations with the LiveView was its tendency to drop the Bluetooth connection every so often, so we were pleased to see that the Xperia S and the SmartWatch stayed happily connected.

From there on, the usefulness of the SmartWatch varied. It’s definitely a companion screen to your phone, not a replacement: the functionality each app offers is shallow, and the watch basically helps you decide whether or not it’s worth pulling that phone out from your pocket or purse.

The call and text messaging features are straightforward: incoming calls show number and, if saved to the contacts, the name from your address book, as well as buttons to answer or reject. Still, if you answer it you can’t use the SmartWatch as a wrist-worn speakerphone. Music playback can be controlled too, with volume, play/pause and track skip buttons on top of album art.

Twitter and Facebook functionality is basic, showing the contents of new tweets or statuses. You can Like those Facebook statuses from the SmartWatch itself, or open the specific message on your phone; the Twitter app allows you to save a single preconfigured reply to fire back from the watch, though the usefulness of that is limited.

The email app could be useful – showing notifications on a new message, with sender, subject line and the first line or so of the body-text, then allowing you to open the message up on your phone – but it unfortunately only works with the Sony Android Mail app. Gmail users, far more prevalent, get a third-party notifier app that flags up new messages but doesn’t preview them.

Another third-party app is the VFinder camera remote control, which streams a live view from the Xperia S’ camera direct to the screen of the SmartWatch and, when you swipe up, takes a photo. You’re obviously limited by the 10m Bluetooth range, and we found the app would usually crash if we flipped from portrait to landscape orientation, but it’s a good demo for friends and useful for handsfree vanity shots.

Other apps show battery status of your phone, weather widgets, currency conversion and phonebook access, with varying degrees of stability. There are more on the way, too; exercise tracking app Endomondo is apparently in the pipeline, among others.

Our experience with the Galaxy Nexus proved less successful. Bluetooth connections were reasonably stable, but we had issues with the LiveView manager: widgets that said they had installed did not show up in the list of options. It’s unclear if this is an Ice Cream Sandwich problem or something else, but we can’t particularly hold Sony responsible as the Android 4.0 phone isn’t among its list of tested models.

The OLED display is a little crunchy with graphics and texts, thanks to its relatively low resolution, but decent indoors. Outdoors, it’s fairly visible though we found ourselves shading it with a hand when in brighter light. In contrast, the transflective display on the WIMM One proved far easier to see in the same conditions.

Battery

After a full day of wearing, with pinging Gmail notifications, some incoming call and message alerts, and a little pretend-spy play with the remote camera viewfinder app, we still had battery life showing on the SmartWatch. You’d have to be a low-volume user to get the full week Sony suggests out of it, mind, and we can’t see that audience being especially interested in the SmartWatch.

Wrap-Up

Compared to its predecessor, the Sony SmartWatch is a vast improvement: for a start it can keep hold of a Bluetooth connection. Still, what worth it brings to most users remains questionable. If you regularly field calls and receive – but don’t need to reply to – text messages then it could be useful; if you generally feel the need to reply to your messages and emails, then you’re still going to be pulling your phone out anyway.

Third-party app support may address that in the coming months, and we can see fitness buffs appreciating the remote functionality from incoming apps like Endomondo along with the music control. Still, we can’t help but wish Android voice commands were supported: that way, you could talk into your SmartWatch and dictate a reply instantly. Meanwhile, with Sony pushing its NFC SmartTags for the Xperia S, it would’ve been nice to be able to hold the SmartWatch next to one and remotely trigger functionality on the handset.

At $119.99 or £89.99 when it arrives in mid-April, it’s an expensive sell for something that, for the most part, remains a gimmick. We’re not convinced with the usability of the SmartWatch’s display when outdoors, either, preferring the panel technology on the WIMM One. Still, Sony’s watch is the cheaper of the two, and while the unit itself is bigger, it’s overall less bulky thanks to the smaller watch strap. Nonetheless, there’s a long way to go before accessories like the Sony SmartWatch break into the mainstream.

Hardware

Unapologetic in its squared-off, angular heft, the Xperia S is a solid, creak-free slab of a phone finished in soft-touch plastic and neatly recessed glass. Accommodating a 4.3-inch display demands a 5 x 2.5 x 0.4 inch casing, however; this isn’t a small handset, and at 5.1oz it’s reasonably weighty. Most distinctive is the strip of transparent plastic separating the end-cap – which on the Xperia U is interchangeable, but here is fixed – from the body of the smartphone as a whole.

It’s an eye-catching design tweak, and there’s a moment of real surprise when you realize you can see your hand all the way through. Sandwiched inside are the illuminated logos for back, home and menu, though the touch-sensitive buttons themselves are actually just above, highlighted with tiny dots in the strip beneath the display. Sometimes we’d find ourselves aiming for the transparent section and having to double-stab to make sure we actually got the button we were aiming for.

The rest of the hardware is a mixture of the eminently sensible and the ridiculous. You get a dedicated camera shortcut key along with the volume rocker on the right edge, together with the power/lock button and a neatly bevelled headphone jack on the top, together with separate ports for microUSB and micro HDMI. Unfortunately Sony insists on putting fiddling covers on top of both of them. On the back there’s the stacked row of the 12.1-megapixel camera lens, an LED flash, speaker and microphone; the whole cover clicks up to remove.

Unfortunately, once you actually get the cover off, there’s no much to see. The Xperia S’ 1,750 mAh battery is non-user-accessible, and there’s no microSD card slot, only 32GB of data storage and up to 1.5GB of app storage. In fact, all you reveal is the microSIM slot, and we’re not sure why Sony didn’t just add another, smaller notch to drop that in and do away with the removable back panel altogether.

The crowning glory of the Xperia S is probably its display. Sony has had some great mobile panels on previous models, using the company’s Mobile BRAVIA Engine to boost contrast and make for inky blacks, and the same technology is used on the 4.3-inch 1280 x 720 TFT panel here. It’s crisp and beautifully pixel-dense, though viewing angles drop off quicker than, say, the Super AMOLED HD of the Galaxy Nexus. Still, face-on there’s plenty to like about this screen, even if Sony appears to have deleted the auto-backlight option from the settings.

Above is a 1.3-megapixel camera capable of 720p HD video, along with an LED indicator light. On the inside, meanwhile, there’s a 1.5GHz dualcore Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 MSM8260 chipset paired with Adreno 220 graphics and 1GB of RAM. Connectivity includes quadband UMTS/HSPA (850/900/1900/2100) and quadband GSM/EDGE, along with WiFi b/g/n (2.4GHz-only), Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and NFC, plus there’s the usual selection of A-GPS, accelerometer, ambient light sensor (which we’re assuming simply can’t be turned off, given the missing setting), digital compass, gyroscope and proximity sensor.

Software

Sony would like us to believe Android 2.3 Gingerbread is good enough at launch for the Xperia S. It’s not. With Ice Cream Sandwich several months old, launching a new phone – a flagship, no less – with any version earlier is unforgivable. Sony attempts to redeem itself with the promise of an Android 4.0 upgrade sometime in Q2 2012, but we’ll save the kudos until software actually hits devices.

Without ICS, what you get is Sony’s own custom Xperia skin, along with several preloaded apps and features of differing usefulness. There are the usual Android cluster – Gmail (though not the improved version of 4.0), YouTube, Google Maps and the Android Market, among others – then some of Sony’s own devising, such as a new camera app, PlayNow music app, Timescape with social networking integration, and TrackID for identifying music. Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited get menu shortcuts but lead to Sony’s site for you to actually download the apps themselves.

The UI itself is clean and reasonably intuitive, though Sony does clutter up most of the five homescreen panes with widgets from the start. The lockscreen gets basic notifications, though no HTC Sense-style shortcuts. A pinch-zoom gesture shows a floating cloud of all those widgets rather than the more traditional preview thumbnails of the panes themselves, and Sony has built in a useful screenshot tool, with an option in the power menu accessed by holding down the power/lock button.

The Xperia S is also PlayStation Certified, which means you have a selection of (paid) PSOne classic titles to choose from. None of them particularly put the 341ppi display or dualcore processor through their paces, however, and there are more impressive games to be found in the Android Market. When Sony finally gets its “four-screen” strategy – phones, tablets, PCs and TVs interconnecting – up and running there might be more appeal here. Unfortunately, there’s a distinct case of Mac-blindness when it comes to hooking up the Xperia S to a computer, such as to transfer across photos, music or video: the phone doesn’t show up as an external drive, and asks for Sony’s own Windows-only PC Companion app.

Update: Sony has a “Bridge For Mac” app helpfully buried on its site, allowing for drag-and-drop file management as well as sync with iPhoto and iTunes. You’ll need this running on any Mac you want to swap files with.

Generally, the dualcore processor keeps things moving swiftly, and we experienced no lag or slowdown aside from with a more well-packed Gmail inbox (something even the most powerful Android phones seem to take issue at). It’s no quadcore, like the latest from HTC and others, but we’re yet to see apps that actually take full advantage of having all those cores, and there are obviously battery compromises there too.

NFC

Near-Field Communications has been floating around on Android devices for some time now – in the US, the Nexus S has been taking advantage of Google Wallet for contactless payments for months now – but we’re yet to see the system tip fully over into the mainstream.

Sony believes the answer is Xperia SmartTags, small NFC-enabled stickers that allow you to trigger different settings by holding your phone nearby. It’s a half-hearted effort in some ways, though. At the moment, not all of Sony’s new Android range actually supports NFC – the Xperia P announced at MWC 2012 last week does, but the U doesn’t, for instance. Still, if Sony can convince third-party manufacturers to include NFC tags in their accessories, the SmartTags system could find its feet.

Even if you don’t use the new tags, there are other basic automation features offered on the Xperia S. Plug in the charger or some headphones, for instance, and you can have an app automatically load: useful if you want to kick the Xperia S into desk-clock mode, for instance.

Camera

With 12.1-megapixels and Full HD video recording, the Xperia S is setting out its multimedia ambitions early. Sony’s recent high-end smartphones have featured solid camera abilities, and in general the Xperia S continues that track-record. The dedicated shortcut key – a two-step button for locking focus and then firing off a frame – can load the camera even when the phone is locked (though if you have a PIN you’ll have to punch that in first), and you can choose to have an on-screen control, tap-to-take or solely use that physical button.

If you choose tap-to-take then the focus is locked wherever you touch the screen. Otherwise it’s a matter of locking that with the hardware key, or dropping out of Scene Recognition mode and selecting touch-focus manually. You also get smile and face detection, multi-auto focus, as well as a digital image stabilizer. Sony may not have a special multi-power LED flash like HTC’s new One Series, but the Xperia S did a solid job of lighting the scene without drowning it. We did often find ourselves accidentally covering the lens with our finger while holding the camera up, however.

The end results are detail-filled and show accurate colors, with focus locking fast. Low-light shots inevitably suffer from increased noise, but close-ups are particularly impressive. Video, meanwhile, offers center, average or spot metering along with single-point, face detect or infinity autofocus, and produces up to 1080p Full HD clips. They’re solid though not the most outstanding we’ve seen from a smartphone, though the 30fps rate keeps them smooth.

As always, there are a couple of gimmick shooting modes to play with. A panorama tool allows you to create wide shots by panning the Xperia S across the scene, while a 3D panorama mode does the same but – when the handset is plugged into a 3D-compatible TV via the HDMI output – promises to show the end result in 3D instead. After a brief play, though, both went generally untouched.

Phone and Battery

Audio performance from the Xperia S proved satisfactory, with both the earpiece and speaker being loud and clear during calls. We had no problems with reception, either. Sony’s bundled hands-free kit is a step up from the basic cheap set you’ll see included with most phones, but it’s not a huge step.

With a non-removable battery, the Xperia S will have to live up to its 8 hour 30 minute talktime estimates or 420 hours standby estimates if users aren’t to be disappointed. In practice, the Sony proved par for the course for a big-screen Android smartphone. With push Gmail turned on, Twitter and Google+ updating in the background, some use of the browser and Google Maps over 3G, a couple of calls and some SMS messaging, the Xperia S was gasping for a recharge by late afternoon. More casual use could extend this out to a full day, but a nightly recharge is a must.

Wrap-Up

The Xperia S finds itself launching at a tricky time for Sony. The company is partway between developing its own phones, entirely separate from Sony Ericsson of old, and between the last gasps of the ill-fated partnership. That tumultuous cradle shows itself in the absence of Ice Cream Sandwich, increasingly an inexcusable omission from what’s billed as a flagship. Sony certainly isn’t the only culprit, but there’s no shortage of vitriol to go round.

With Android 4.0, the Xperia S would’ve felt a far more rounded device. The hardware is distinctive and, for the most part, a success – the screen in particular is bright and pleasingly pixel-dense – and the Snapdragon processor, though short a few cores on other recent rivals, still keeps things churning at a satisfactory pace. It’s software that leaves the Sony feeling old beyond its time.

Sony’s commitment to pushing out ICS in Q2 is admirable, but they’ll only get real credit when we see it arrive on handsets. For the moment, the Xperia S is a solid phone but not a stand-out one, and that doesn’t bode well when HTC’s One Series is imminent and Samsung’s much-anticipated Galaxy S III is in the pipeline. In short, the first “true” Sony smartphone of 2012 is yet to arrive.

You also get WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and DLNA support, together with a 12-megapixel main camera and a front-facing camera for video calls. Like LG with the Optimus LTE Tag, Sony will be offering NFC tags that can instantly switch the Xperia S into silent mode or trigger other macros when the smartphone is held nearby.

The only blot on the landscape is the OS: Sony has used Android 2.3 Gingerbread rather than Ice Cream Sandwich, though an upgrade is in the pipeline. That should take place in Q2 2012, the company said at the Xperia S’ launch back at CES (where we also grabbed some hands-on playtime).

The first 250 to pre-order the smartphone from Phones 4u will also get a free SmartWatch. The Xperia S is the European version of the Sony Xperia ion shown in our hands-on video below:

As for specs, you’ll find a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 32GB of internal storage, HDMI out, NFC (Near Field Communication), and support for 1080p HD video. The 4.3 inch display has a stunning 1280 x 720 HD resolution that looked great. It also sports a 12MP rear facing camera and 1.3MP front shooter.

It’s too bad the XPERIA S isn’t launching in the US, I would almost rather see it than the Ion LTE. Both phones were running Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread) and have the latest version of their ‘Timescape’ UI. It is also said both should see Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) sometime in Q2. Also, don’t forget to check out our hands-on with the Ion LTE from earlier.