The Sony Xperia U, Xperia Sola and Xperia P have been officially launched in India, priced at Rs. 17,399, Rs. 19,999, and Rs. 25,449 respectively.
Sony Mobile Communications has officially launched a range of smartphones with unique features and services in India. The three phones, known as Xperia U, Xperia Sola and Xperia P, will now be available at the following prices:
- Sony Xperia U – Rs. 17,399
- Xperia Sola – Rs. 19,999
- Xperia P – Rs. 25,449
Speaking at the launch event, P. Balaji, The MD of Sony Mobile India, said:
All three mobile smartphones will be available to in the retail markets by the end of this month (May, 2012). It should be noted that Sony Xperia U and Xperia Sola are already available to consumers, while the Xperia P will made available in a couple of days.
As part of its promotions, Sony has partnered with Tata Docomo to offer up to 3GB of free data plans in to consumers, along with 30 pre-installed games.
The Sony Xperia U features a 3.50-inch scratch-resistant TFT touchscreen capable of displaying a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels. The Operating System is 2.3, Gingerbread, which will eventually be upgraded to Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. Xperia U is powered by a 1 GHz STE U8500 dual-core processor along with 512 MB of RAM. The smartphone comes with a 5 megapixel camera with features like auto focus, 16x digital zoom and LED flash. The internal storage capacity is 8 GB. Sony is also offering free 50GB cloud space for Xperia U users for life.
The Xperia P, the most high-end phone among the three, comes with a larger 4-inch scratch-resistant TFT touchscreen and a resolution of 960×540 pixels. It comes with an 8 megapixel camera and internal storage capacity of 16GB. The RAM size is 1GB. The other specifications are similar to that of the Xperia U.
The Xperia Sola has a 3.7 inch scratch-resistant TFT touchscreen and lies midway between The Xperia U and P in terms of specs. The phone is NFC-ready, and is powered by a 1 GHz dual-core processor. Xperia Sola features a 5 megapixel camera with auto focus and LED flash support. The phone comes with 8 GB of internal storage and a microSD memory card slot capable of providing an additional storage of up to 32GB, along with 50GB of free cloud storage.
At the launch event, Sony also declared that, September onwards, it would stop shipping any more feature phones across the globe depending on its smartphone presence. Sony has around eight feature phones available in the Indian market as of now. P. Balaji was further quoted as saying:
“Our research tells us people are willing to pay more for a smartphone to enjoy genuine mobile internet experience. We expect the trend to get stronger as 3G data services become more affordable and gain traction.”
This move may is another step forward in the direction of ending the reign of feature phones, in favor of the smartphones. We already have RIM and Apple who do not make any feature phones, while other like HTC has very few of those. The availability of budget Android phones below Rs. 10,000 is another reason we may not see any more feature phones in the future.
Check out the impressive Sony Xperia P video here: