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Sony Xperia acro S jumps through FCC hoops
Water and dust-proof certified, Sony's Xperia acro S was bound to survive the FCC's prodding and poking. The examination confirms some Euro-centric, but AT&T-friendly, HSPA radio bands and offers up some (oddly squashed) real-word glimpses at a phone that's got already going under two different names. Yep, this 4.3-inch phone's already launched in Japan as the Xperia acro HD, although there's been no word on a release on US shores. Radio test fans can hit up the source for yet more details and some side profile shots.
Sony Xperia Acro HD for NTT DoCoMo hands-on (video)
We just happened upon the Sony Xperia Acro HD for NTT DoCoMo, which is sold as the SO-03HD and recently launched with the Japanese carrier. As many of you are aware, the handset is a variant of the Xperia Ion, but with a few features for the locals such as a built-in TV tuner, mobile payment and infrared support. The Acro HD offers a respectable list of specs, which include a Qualcomm MSM 8260 SoC with a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU, a 4.3-inch, 720p display and a 12.1-megapixel camera that includes Sony's Exmor R sensor and is capable of shooting 1080p video. It also includes 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and an 1,840mAh battery. As a final notable aspect, the Xperia Acro HD is waterproof and can remain submerged in up to one meter of water for a half-hour. The phone is currently available in a variety of colors, which include Blue, Pink, White and Black -- the last being the particular variant that we sighted today. While there are many aspects of the phone we liked, such as its high-quality display and refined aesthetics, a number of its design elements such as the extendable TV antenna and atrocious number of doors for ports struck us as quite flimsy. The phone runs Android 2.3.7 with a heavy amount of skinning from the carrier, which you can see in our hands-on video after the break.
Sony Ericsson keeps busy before the break-up, intros Xperia NX and Xperia acro HD for Japan
While we've been bamboozled by both a Sony and Sony Ericsson-branded Xperia S, the soon-to-be-divorced company still has a few handsets left to belt out of its once happy home. Alongside its new HD flagship and the LTE-powered Xperia Ion, Japan is getting treated to its own two slabs of smartphone magic. The Xperia acro HD will match Japan-centric features like mobile wallet and TV tuner found in the original, but present it all with the same 720p Reality Display we admired on the Xperia S. It'll arrive in four guises: aqua, black, sakura (that'll be pink, then) and ceramic (read; off-white). It's joined over in Nihon by the Xperia NX, which is apparently a Japanese-flavored Xperia S and keeps with the monochromatic flavors we've seen at CES. Sadly, we'll have to admire from a distance -- these Japanese market customization jobs are very unlikely to arrive elsewhere. Get the full Xperia 2012 story in the English press release after the break, or decipher the Google-translated source below for the full nitty-gritty.
