Several weeks ago, Mobile Review wrote in depth piece about the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X12 (aka Anzu), which is the company’s next major flagship phone and the spiritual successor to the XPERIA X10. The review is so extensive, you would almost swear for a moment that the device is on sale now, but in reality it hasn’t been announced by SE yet! This is probably one of the most detailed leaks I’ve seen in all of my years of writing about Sony products.
Let’s talk about hardware first and foremost.
The phone obviously looks like the X10, but is thinner, lighter and has a bigger screen. The X12 will contain a Qualcomm MSM7230 (Scorpion) processor, which is a 800MHz ARMv7 that is capable of reaching 1GHz according to the processor spec sheet. The processor’s features include an embedded DSP(GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS/WCDMA, HSDPA 14.4Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps baseband), Embedded gpsOne GPS module, gpsOneXTRA Assistance, Dedicated audio subsystem supporting 5.1 surround, 12-megapixel camera support, Integrated 2D/3D graphics GPUs with support for OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenVG 1.1.
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XPERIA X10 owners may wonder why the next phone in this series may have less MHz, but it actually is an improvement, as Mobile Review states the phone “..offers a smoother and more optimized operation, with all the graphic elements of Android presented without any lagging of any kind. The chipsets multimedia capabilities are equal to the ones offered by the QSD8250 but with some improvements. The chipset can now encodes 720p video in H264 smoothly and offers increased playback times for both audio and video while being optimized for decoding DIVX and XVID videos.” It will also have HDMI output to enjoy HD video on your TV, etc.
The camera will most likely be a 12 megapixel sensor and capable of recording 720p video, which Mobile Review states will be much smoother and reliable than the X10. The screen is massive at 4.3″ (854×480) and will support multitouch technology, a feature that was painfully missing from the X10. It is believed that the X12 will not have an AMOLED nor a S-LCD, which is rather unfortunate. DPI is suggested to be around 240, at least in the pre-production unit that was tested.
As for software, the X12 will most likely launch with with Android 2.2 (Froyo) and will recieve a 2.3 update in the summer of 2011. This could frustrate potential owners of this device, but Mobile Review seems more optimistic as they say “for Sony Ericsson, being just one OS version behind the others on the release date of X12 is a step forward.” A rather sarcastic remark, considering the company had sold devices with Android 1.6 for way too long.
Unfortunately Mobile Review has a rather grim outlook for the company and the success of the XPERIA X12, and went on to say:
“So what’s left for Sony Ericsson and the X12? Some of the momentum created years ago in many markets still holds in some of them at least enough for the networks and local retail stores to trust Sony Ericsson and buy one of their devices. This momentum is slowing down in some markets and in others it has completely stopped. X12 will only help stopping in more of them and will leave Sony Ericsson lagging behind even more. A device that could easily have been a decent middle range solution (much like Desire Z is for HTC) is thrown into the market to be eaten at the top end and take down the company with it. Its price tag will not be justified with its features in any possible way and the software disadvantages will only disappoint the buyers of the device.”
