Minus the usual Ericsson name attached, Sony will be releasing the Sony Xperia S in the UK on the 30th of January, we finally have an update of the date courtesy of Play.com and it looks set to cost around £429.99 with VAT and SIM-Free.

With CES being the showcase for the Sony device we think with the feature and spec it has on offer that it will be a welcome new addition to the Android family though some may be disappointed that it will arrive with only a Gingerbread operating system with ICS promised some time after the initial release.

<h3.Who will carry the device?

The usual few will be carrying the Sony Xperia S, including:

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• O2
• Three
• T-Mobile
• Orange
• Phones4U (offering exclusive white version)

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The talk is that Vodafone is not going to be adding it to their stock range but time will tell on that.

So what do I think of the Sony Xperia S?

Looks wise it looks great in product shots, nice and slim, powerful with a 1.5 Ghz dual core processor and with a sizable 4.3 inch LCH HD screen it is also impressive to look at, the camera is a huge 12 MP and it shoots in 720p.

But as is mentioned in the original article, this year is now all about the quad core smartphone and (hopefully) making phones a bit bigger so they can contain a larger battery, slim size zero smartphones are so 2011. Hopefully we can start using our phones as we want without fear of no life remaining in them after only a few hours.

So maybe for those reasons this device may be the last of a dying bred, albeit a sweet looking device and top of its class, it looks likely to get superseded pretty much as soon as it comes out by other beasts on the way.

All that said, bloody nice phone though, what do you think?

With Sony now dropping their old Ericsson name it seems that dropping letters is in fashion right now, as the more correctly named “Sony Mobile Communications” has out fooled us all and is now to call the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD quite simply the Sony Xperia S.

US carriers for the Sony Xperia S:

The release of the new smartphone will however be delivered in the first quarter of this year globally.

Networks:

With no news on carriers in the US, it appears that UK buyers will see the device on the Three network, though we simply have no other news than that currently.

Tech Specs:

The new smartphone device will arrive with some pretty impressive technical specs including a 4.3 inch 1280 x 720 resolution touchscreen display, however right now it seems that it will be running the older version of Android on 2.3, though this could well get an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich come full release, and is definitely promised by the 2nd half of 2012.

And in typical Sony style the new smartphone will sport a massive 12 megapixel camera, with a Sony Exmor R sensor, which will enable the device to record 1080p and 720p video.

Processor:

You will be provided with a powerful 1.5 GHz dual core processor from Qualcomm and an additional 32 GB of storage.

Watch the video below:

What do you make of the new phone?

I am quite glad to see Sony stop writing books for model names and get back to some simplified terms that we can all remember. And from cursory observations it would seem that this device could be a contender, though I see nothing of real note that other smartphone releases such as the Samsung Galaxy S2, Nexus, iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy Note can not compete against.

So would the new Sony Xperia S be of interest to you?