The Sony Ericsson Xperia Duo is set to raise the bar for flagship smartphones. As Sony Ericsson’s worst kept secret, this little monster has found its way into several blurry shots and most recently, a stellar render (seen above). The Xperia Duo is exactly what Sony Ericsson needs to grab hold of the high-end Android smartphone market. Are you ready for a peak under the hood of this Samsung Galaxy S II killer?
Word on the street is the Sony Ericsson Xperia Duo is viscous. According to pocketnow.com, the Xperia Duo touts a dual-core Cortex A9 processor “aided by the Mali-400 GPU, under the name of NovaThor A9500 chipset.” Now for the drumroll. The clock speed of this dual-core chip will be 1.4 GHz, leaving the upgraded Galaxy S II in its wake.
Keeping in mind these specs are still rumors, a second source has hinted the Xperia Duo will instead use the Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon chipset similar to the HTC Sensation. Whether Sony Ericsson decides to play ball with ARM or Qualcomm is anyone’s guess, but the chip will certainly be dual-core and ship with a blistering-fast clock speed.
Outside of the processing power, the second most captivating feature of Xperia Duo is the display. Measuring 4.5-inches diagonally, this qHD display comes equipped with Sony Ericsson’s own Mobile Bravia engine. On the rear is a 12-megapixel camera with Exmor R backlit sensor and providing the juice to deliver the goods is a massive 2500 mAh battery. How a battery of such enormous capacity is able to fit inside a thin form factor remains to be seen.
The combination of cutting-edge processing power, a beautiful high-resolution display, top of the line optics and the largest standard battery we’ve seen on a smartphone make the Sony Ericsson Xperia Duo the Android flagship to beat. Whether or not the device succeeds or fails will depend on several key factors: price, release date and availability of Android updates. The latter of these three factors may be addressed by an unlocked bootloader, but shipping with the latest build of Android will still be essential.
