MWC 2012: Sony overview

Sony Xperia P

The Xperia P has a 4" Reality display with what Sony call WhiteMagic technology. It boosts the brightness of the display by using a fourth subpixel to the traditional RGB setup, namely a white pixel. This is great as older Reality displays had excellent contrast but weren’t very bright.

Sony Xperia P

We stopped by the Sony booth at the MWC to find out more about this new technology and gladly found out there was a nice little set up that would allow us to test it properly. So we loaded the same image on the iPhone 4S and a Galaxy S II and placed them alongside the Xperia P. As you can see the Xperia P does better than either of its competitors both when in the shadow and in bright sunlight.

Sony Xperia P WhiteMagic screen compared to the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy S II

The Xperia P has an aluminum unibody and features the same transparent strip as the Xperia S and it will be available in three color options.

Sony Xperia P hands-on

We also got hold of a red Sony Xperia P unit, so we are able to show you how this one looks in real life, too.

Sony Xperia P in red

The Sony Xperia P shoots 1080p videos with its 8MP camera, thanks to the added power of the ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500. So, in a small way Ericsson is still part of these phones. There's a microHDMI port so you can easily hook up the P to an HDTV.

Sony Xperia P hands-on • Taking a photo with the Xperia P

The P has NFC connectivity, so it's compatible with Sony's Smart tags. It also has a dedicated SmartDock.

The Xperia P runs on Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread skinned with the typical Sony theme you've already seen on the Xperia S and the 2011 Xperia - arc, neo and ray. An ICS upgrade is scheduled for release later this year.