Press shots of blue and pink Sony Xperia SL surface

If you thought Sony’s current lineup of Xperia phones was overwhelming enough, brace yourself for an onslaught of even more on the way. Earlier this month, we heard about them planning to launch a variant of the Xperia S called the SL, through an Indonesian site. Now, we have the first possible press shots of the new phone in two trendy colours. While the Xperia S took itself a little too seriously, it seems like Sony is targetting the young crowd with the SL. The new model will have the codename LT26ii, which is not too different from the LT26i codename for the Xperia S. It’s not surprising that the Xperia SL looks almost identical to the Xperia S as it’s likely to be a variant with a possible bump in CPU speed. In fact, we have absolutely no specifications whatsoever about it so for all we know, it could just be an Xperia S with different colours.

Xperia SL in the flesh

Their current high end phone, the Xperia S was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show and comes with the following specs:

• Android Gingerbread (with ICS upgrade now available)
• 4.3-inch HD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels
• 1.5GHz dual-core processor with a MSM8260 chipset, 1GB RAM
• 12 megapixel camera with Sony Exmor R sensor and 1080p video recording capabilities
• 1.3 megapixel front camera with 720p@30 fps
• 32GB internal memory
• HDMI port
• Weighs 144g

 
We’ve already reviewed the Xperia S, which is currently priced at Rs. 31,999, and here’s what we had to say about the device, "The Xperia S is unlike any other flagship phone we’ve seen from Sony Ericsson in the past and represents a bold new direction for the company. The phone has a beautiful build and feels premium and packed to the gills with features. However, it’s far from perfect. There are some sensitivity issues with the capacitive buttons, camera performs poorly in low-light indoor shooting and the microSIM is annoying. However, at this price, it’s certainly one of the better options compared to the Sensation XE. If you can live with these little issues then we recommend the Xperia S for its beautiful screen, great design, good camera (for outdoor shooting) and feature rich app selection out-of-the-box."

The Xperia SL will most likely be unveiled at this year’s IFA expo in Berlin, come September. Until then, feel free to speculate about its features and possible price point.