Sony Xperia S

Introduction

In staging their grand return, Sony Mobile could've done a lot worse than the Xperia S. The fresh divorcees are back on the market, their new Xperia flagship kindly supplying the bang. And while the HD screen and dual-core processor are not exactly breaking news, there's an extensive set of features to make a geek's heart flutter.

he Sony Xperia S aims for camera excellence with 12MP still photography and 1080p video recording. It has an HD screen and a microHDMI port, not to mention a dedicated TV Launcher that lets you control the phone with your TV remote.
The Xperia S is a high-performance phone too - while quad-core phones will soon hit the shelves, the dual-core 1.5GHz processor and Adreno 220 GPU show good results in early benchmarks.
We'll do a first round of benchmarks later, but let's have a closer look at the specs of the Sony Xperia S first.

Sony Xperia S at a glance:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 850/900/1900/2100 MHz, 14.4 Mbps HSDPA, 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
• Dimensions: 128 x 64 x 10.6 mm, 144 g
• Display: 4.3" 16M-color TFT capacitive touchscreen, 720 x 1280 pixels
• CPU: Qualcomm MSM8260 chipset, dual-core 1.5 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 220 GPU
• OS: Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), planned 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update
• Memory: 32GB of storage, 1GB of RAM
• Camera: 12 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash, face detection and touch focus; 1080p video recording at 30fps; 1.3MP front-facing camera with 720p video recording, sweep multi-angle shots for lenticular print effect
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA; Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, microHDMI port
• Misc: Sony Timescape UI, TV launcher, built-in accelerometer, proximity sensor, Sony Mobile Bravia engine, multi-touch input, scratch-resistant surface, microSIM only

Not quite like the Sony Ericsson Xperia arcs, is it? The Xperia S is better in almost every respect, save for thickness. Still, considering how thick those old 12MP shooters were (especially around the camera), 10.6mm sounds great.
The screen on the Xperia S deserves praise too. The 4.3" BRAVIA LCD of 720p resolution is up there with the best screens on the market. At 342ppi, it's definitely one of the sharpest.