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Sony’s $1,799 Xperia PRO-I has the specs to match its price tag
A high-end camera behemoth marketed towards professional photographers
Despite making camera sensors for almost all major smartphones out there, Sony's Xperia phones have always lagged in the imaging department. They also failed to appeal to customers despite packing impressive specs. The company took a different approach to smartphones with its $2,500 Xperia PRO earlier this year, marketing it as an accessory for photographers and videographers. Nine months later, Sony is again trying something different with the Xperia PRO-I, which packs a massive 1-inch camera sensor and an f2-f/4 variable aperture lens in a handy package.
Over the past few years, Sony has aligned mobile efforts with its focus on the camera-to-viewership pipeline. Now, we have clearer ideas of what the Japanese manufacturer will show off in its product launch event tomorrow.
It was only last week that Sony began to update the Xperia P with Ice Cream Sandwich, but it looks like the company is now going full steam ahead and bringing the update to no fewer than 8 more devices this week.
Before Sony Ericsson became Sony Mobile, the company seemed committed to developing an Android 4.0 update, going so far as to release alpha ROMs for a number of Xperia devices, and more recently a beta for the Xperia Play. Here we are, a quarter of the way into 2012, and Xperia owners are still gnawing on last year's official Gingerbread. Although, there may finally be a light at the end of the tunnel; the Sony Mobile blog has announced that the first Android 4.0 updates will roll out to select Xperia phones in mid-April. Don't get too excited when wireless carriers are involved though.
Just after expanding Nightly support to Samsung's Epic 4G and a slew of LG handsets, the CyanogenMod team has brought nightlies to a handful of Xperia devices, including Coconut (the Xperia Live with Walkman), Iyokan (the Xperia Pro), and Satsuma (the Xperia Active).
The days where the Nexus S was the sole Android 2.3 smartphone are over, it seems - as are the days where Sony Ericsson had only one Android-powered Xperia-branded device.