Official image of Xperia Odin leaks online

Those following mobile-related tech websites will know that Sony is preparing a handset that is expected to be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in early 2013. The handset had been captured in the wild before and this time it makes an appearance in an official press photograph.

The official image, like the one spotted earlier, shows the phone with an extremely narrow bezel and the Xperia logo at the bottom. It also sports a metallic finish.

Press image leaked online (Image Credit)

As far as specifications are concerned, the handset is expected to feature a 5-inch Full HD display, 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset and 2GB of RAM, 13MP rear camera and 32GB of onboard storage. An earlier report stated that Sony was preparing a C650X smartphone under the code name of Odin. The report went on to state, “As detected in its User-Agent Profile (UAProf), the phone looks to run Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean and Sony's 10.1.A.0.XXX firmware. To be clear, there is no other evidence to support the claim of "flagship" device. Considering we're talking about early 2013, the idea of anything older than 4.1 would be met with a collective grumbling by the Android masses. Yet, if Sony is able to build on the momentum of recent models (Xperia T), then the Odin could be mythical indeed.”

If the report by the Japanese website is accurate, then we can expect Sony to launch three new handsets with model numbers - C6502, C6503 and C6506. However, it could be that these are model numbers of variants of the same handset.

Two entry level models -  C1505 and C1604/ C1605 - are expected in 2013. These handsets may come with HVGA displays the sizes of which are not yet known, and will run on Android v4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

In an earlier report by GSMArena, the website shared some information on these entry-level handsets by stating that the C160X is powered by a Snapdragon S4 Play chipset, with a single 1GHz Cortex-A5 core and Adreno 200 graphics as revealed by its NenaMark 2 results. The C150X is probably powered by the same platform, though there are no benchmark results for this one.

The two entry level handsets are expected to be similar to the Xperia tipo. Here is a quick look at some of the features of the Sony Xperia tipo:

• 3.2-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels
• 3G, EDGE/GPRS, HSDPA, HSUPA, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi hotspot
• GPS with A-GPS
• Bluetooth version 2.1 with A2DP
• 3.15 megapixel camera
• 2.9GB internal storage expandable up to 32GB via microSD