This is probably one of the most detailed leaks I’ve seen in all of my years of writing about Sony products.
Let’s talk about hardware first and foremost.
The phone obviously looks like the X10, but is thinner, lighter and has a bigger screen. The X12 will contain a Qualcomm MSM7230 (Scorpion) processor, which is a 800MHz ARMv7 that is capable of reaching 1GHz according to the processor spec sheet. The processor’s features include an embedded DSP(GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS/WCDMA, HSDPA 14.4Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps baseband), Embedded gpsOne GPS module, gpsOneXTRA Assistance, Dedicated audio subsystem supporting 5.1 surround, 12-megapixel camera support, Integrated 2D/3D graphics GPUs with support for OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenVG 1.1.
XPERIA X10 owners may wonder why the next phone in this series may have less MHz, but it actually is an improvement, as Mobile Review states the phone “..offers a smoother and more optimized operation, with all the graphic elements of Android presented without any lagging of any kind. The chipsets multimedia capabilities are equal to the ones offered by the QSD8250 but with some improvements. The chipset can now encodes 720p video in H264 smoothly and offers increased playback times for both audio and video while being optimized for decoding DIVX and XVID videos.” It will also have HDMI output to enjoy HD video on your TV, etc.
The camera will most likely be a 12 megapixel sensor and capable of recording 720p video, which Mobile Review states will be much smoother and reliable than the X10. The screen is massive at 4.3″ (854×480) and will support multitouch technology, a feature that was painfully missing from the X10. It is believed that the X12 will not have an AMOLED nor a S-LCD, which is rather unfortunate. DPI is suggested to be around 240, at least in the pre-production unit that was tested.
As for software, the X12 will most likely launch with with Android 2.2 (Froyo) and will recieve a 2.3 update in the summer of 2011. This could frustrate potential owners of this device, but Mobile Review seems more optimistic as they say “for Sony Ericsson, being just one OS version behind the others on the release date of X12 is a step forward.” A rather sarcastic remark, considering the company had sold devices with Android 1.6 for way too long.
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