They were initially slated for a May 7 release at Clove

Apr 23, 2012 12:38 GMT  ·  By

Although multiple major retailers in the UK promised they would start shipping the Xperia P and/or Xperia U in early May, it looks like the smartphone won’t be available until at the end of next month.

At least one UK-based authorized seller confirmed the Android phones wouldn’t be able until May 28. According to Clove UK, Sony is to blame for the delay of the smartphones, though no explanation has been given for the moment.

This is slightly later than previously thought – the date provided when the devices were announced at MWC 2012 was May 7th,” Clove UK claims.

This is a three-week delay, so customers who were anxiously waiting to purchase any of the two devices will probably be tempted to grab other Android phones in the same price range.

Along with the Sony Xperia S, the Xperia U and P are part of the recently announced NXT series of devices. All smartphones in the series go by the “Iconic Identity” design, which makes them stand out from other devices in the same category.

Currently, Clove UK has the Xperia P in Black and Silver, and the Xperia U in White and Black, up for pre-order. Those willing to wait three more weeks for the smartphones to go live can head over to the retailer’s online store and pre-purchase it.

Expect both smartphones to come with Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform on board, though Sony promised that an Ice Cream Sandwich update would be available soon after launch.

In addition, Xperia P and U are equipped with ST-Ericsson U8500 chipset, which embeds a dual-core processor clocked at 1 GHz and a DB8500 GPU.

It is also worth mentioning that Xperia P packs 16GB (13GB user available) of internal memory and 1GB of RAM, while the Xperia U features only 4GB onboard memory and 512MB of RAM.

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