Sony only recently took full control of Sony Ericsson, putting to end a tumultuous 10-year relationship that many industry experts held Sony back — and not just in the mobile arena, but company-wide. Now that all that nastiness is behind them, it’s time to push the Xperia line ahead and out some new handsets like the Xperia Nozomi LT26i.
Those of you who have grown weary of the never-ending stream of 5-ish inch black plastic and glass Android slabs will no doubt be thrilled to see that Sony’s chosen to break with the norm this time. The LT26i sports a gleaming white back (which should keep the appearance of fingerprints to a minimum) that’s broken down the center by its rear-facing camera and LED flash. The Sony Ericsson badge makes its presence felt near the bottom edge, just above a snazzy, LED-illumated band.
On the front face, you’ll find the slim row of physical buttons that you’ve seen on other Xperia phones like the super-slim Arc. It sits just below one of the LT26i’s most noteworthy features, a 320DPi 1280×800 pixel display that Engadget has pegged at 4.6 inches. As for what’s under the hood, that remains a lot less clear than the leaked images. It’s reckoned to be packing a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and capable of benchmarks that outstrip the Samsung Galaxy S2 by about 15 per cent. RAM gets reported by Android as 691MB (768MB possibly?), and the LT26i’s other capabilities like WiFi, Bluetooth, and NFC support are still a mystery for the time being.
We’ll see plenty of additional information about this one before it launches, including whether or not Sony decides to dump the Ericsson branding from the LT26i. For $1.45 billion, they’re entitled to brand this thing as a straight-up Sony phone.
