Dick Smith has started selling the Sony Xperia U unlocked on their website, offering the phone in either Black or White for $299 + Delivery. Featuring a 3.5-inch ‘Reality Display’ powered by the Mobile BRAVIA Engine the phone also has a 5 MP camera with LED Flash and is powered by a 1GHz Dual Core CPU and comes with 512MB of RAM inside and 8GB of internal storage however it does lack a MicroSD card slot, the phone has xLoud loudness enhancement and apparently delivers 3D surround sound as well. It ships with Android 2.3 Gingerbread but according to the Sony Mobile Blog an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich is due in Q3 this year.
The main ‘novelty’ feature for the phone is the transparent led notification system at the bottom which changes colour and also the coloured exchangeable end-caps for the phone, I certainly remember the days of the Nokia 5110 and exchangeable face plates but never saw fit to change my face plate colour, black was fine with me but it did seem to a ‘thing’ so this could be a good move for Sony depending on their marketing of it, but the Notification LED certainly is an attractive feature.
This is a terrific unit for people wanting a powerful phone in a small form factor. Fits in the rear pocket of running shorts, which is great as I don’t like using armbands.