Sony's 2013 flagship phone codenamed Odin

With the sun almost setting over 2012, it is time to look at what 2013 may have to offer. A report by CNET, which has acquired information via a Japanese website, claims that the next flagship smartphone by Sony has been codenamed Odin.

As per the report by CNET, the author Scott Webster states, “Sony is prepping a C650X smartphone under the code name of Odin. 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.”

Something better than the Xperia T to be announced by early 2013?

If the report by the Japanese website is accurate, then we may 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 are expected in 2013 by Sony. These handsets feature -- C1505 and C1604/ C1605 -- are believed to come with HVGA displays of sizes yet unknown, and will run on Android v4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

In a related report by GSMArena, the mobile related website shares some information on these entry level handsets, “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 (yet).”

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 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

The tipo was recently launched in India, and is directed at the youth segment in the country, and hence is media and social networking-friendly. The Sony Xperia tipo is priced at Rs 9,999.