14 DAY TRIAL // Japanese-Swedish handset vendor seems pretty fond of the idea of launching smaller versions of its high-end smartphones, and the Sony Ericsson ST18i Urushi is one such device, it seems.
Apparently, the mobile phone maiker would aim at bringing it to the market as the successor of Sony Ericsson Xperia arc, which was unveiled in early January, and which arrived on shelves only several weeks ago.
Codenamed Urushi, the Sony Ericsson ST18i should sport about the same hardware as the high-end device, but with a smaller, 3.2-inch touchscreen packed on its fron.
Apparently, the mobile phone would sport a 1GHz application processor inside, just as the Xperia arc, namely a Snapdragon chipset with a Scorpion CPU and an Adreno 205 GPU.
The phone's touchscreen display should deliver a 854 x 480 pixels (FWVGA) resolution, and would sport the proprietary Bravia Mobile engine, the same as the latest additions to the Xperia family.
At the same time, the handset is rumored to come to the market with an 8-megapixel photo snapper on the back, with LED flash and support for HD 720p video recording.
The same as its predecessor, the yet unannounced Sony Ericsson ST18i Urushi would run under Google's Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system.
Moreover, the handset should include support for 3G networks, as well as WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity options, along with a built-in GPS receiver.
This would be only one of the mobile phones that Sony Ericsson was rumored to plan on launching during the ongoing year, but which were not formally introduced for the time being.
According to the guys over at GSM Arena, which brought the said photos to the web, the mobile phone should make an appearance on shelves sometime in September, which means that it might be officially announced in the near future.
Hopefully, it won't be long before Sony Ericsson announces new members of its Xperia family, largely dominated by Android at the moment.
