The smartphone is expected to arrive in stores in early March

Feb 24, 2012 10:40 GMT  ·  By

UK-based carriers and authorized retailers are among the first to offer the Sony Xperia S smartphone. For the time being, an early March release has been confirmed by a few retailers, while others plan to launch it in mid-March.

All in all, Sony Xperia S will be available in the UK starting next month. The smartphone will be available for free on select plans, on most networks.

Although Orange UK has just listed the device under its “Coming Soon” category, those who want to pre-order the Xperia S can do so via Phones4U retailer, which is offering the smartphone for free on a £28.50 monthly tariff for 24 months.

Sony Xperia S was unveiled earlier last month at the International Consumers Electronics Show, along with the Xperia ion, which is aimed at North American smartphone market.

These are the first the Sony-branded devices launched by the Japanese company, but others will soon follow as the handset maker announced an important launch event for February 26, one day ahead of Mobile World Congress 2012 trade fair.

Hardware-wise, Sony Xperia S is packed with high-end features, including a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon processor clocked at 1.5 GHz, as well as 32GB ROM, 1GB of RAM. There’s no microSD card slot for memory expansion, which might be disappointing to some.

The phone boasts a hyper-vibrant 4.3-inch LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen display with HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution, which is based on Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine technology.

There’s also an impressive 12-megapixel rear camera with autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording, as well as a secondary 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls.

Last but not least, the smartphone is powered by Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform, but Sony confirmed it would deploy an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade in the following months.