Sony is now flying solo on the smartphone market, after buying out Ericsson’s share of the deal, and has recently announced two new phones ready for release, namely the Xperia P and Xperia neo L.
These are two affordable options joining the Xperia line of smartphones, following high-end handsets such as Xperia Ion and Xperia S. The company is basically trying to cover all bases by releasing a few affordable models in addition to the higher-end and more expensive models under the sole brand name.
Design
These two are mid-range and entry-level smartphones and look rather different as a consequence. The Sony Xperia P is part of the NXT Series and looks pretty much like any other phone in the Xperia family, while the neo L seems to come straight from the past and still shows some of Ericsson’s influences.
The Xperia P comes in the same square design and looks a lot like the Xperia Ion or Xperia S, while the Xperia neo L looks a lot like the Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo. In fact the neo L doesn’t just look like the Xperia Neo but also shares a few hardware features with this older model from the Ericsson era.
Hardware
The Xperia P will not disappoint you in terms of hardware features and could easily be compared with a higher-end model from the Xperia line of smartphones. The neo L, on the other hand, is your average entry-level smartphone, featuring a Qualcomm single core CPU running a 1Ghz and 512MB of RAM.
If you take a closer look at the Xperia P, you’ll be able to find a few special features, including the Bravia Mobile-powered Reality display with WhiteMagic technology which greatly enhances your visual experience with this handset.
The processor powering the Xperia P is not a quad core, like you would find in the high-end smartphones currently on the market, but a dual core STE NovaThor U8500 chipset, which is actually pretty good for multitasking. This dual core processor runs at 1GHz and is aided by 1GB of RAM, while the graphic side of things is handled by the Mali 400 GPU – one of the top 3 graphical adapters for smartphones.
Connectivity options coming with both of these new Xperia smartphones include WiFi N, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS and USB, while the XPeria P also adds DLNA and HDMI to the mix.
Software
One interesting detail regarding these two smartphones is that the neo L features Android 4.0 pre-installed, while the Xperia P comes with Gingerbread and is still expecting the Ice Cream Sandwich update. This detail will most likely confuse a few people when they’re faced with a choice between these two. Both of these phones use the Sony Timescape UI though, which will make them feel pretty much the same for users.
Sony hasn’t released any details about pricing with these phones, but we’re expecting two affordable price tags for them. The Xperia P will soon become available in US and Europe, while the Xperia neo L will head straight for China and you won’t be able to acquire it in the western countries unfortunately.
