The last 12 months have brought mixed fortunes at best for Sony. While its Xperia NXT line of smartphones was quite well received in general, the Sony Tablet S and P seemed to barely register any sales according to most reports.
One thing that the tablets did have though was a unique and distinctive design ethos, which seemed to imitate a folded magazine.
Sony doesn’t seem to have given up on slates just yet either, going by a set of internal company slides leaked by Mobilflip, a German tech website.
Apparently, Sony’s Tablet S has a successor coming up, and is being dubbed the Xperia Sony Tablet. It is an evolved version of the folded magazine design seen in the Tablet S, with a greater emphasis on sleekness. Given that the likes of the Xperia S & P in the 2012 NXT smartphone series boasted of incredibly refined and classy design, the Xperia Tablet would be quite a worthy member of the Xperia family of devices.
The Xperia Tablet’s improvements over the Tablet S aren’t just skin deep though. It has a decidedly more powerful set of specs, most notable among which is the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. It’ll definitely have at least Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (or maybe even 4.1 Jelly Bean) out of the box, will have storage capacities of 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. There’s a sizeable 6000 mAh provided too, along with 3G connectivity unlike the Tablet S.
Another interesting feature leaked by the slides is a keyboard that’s similar in vein to the one seen in the Microsoft Surface, while also acting like a kickstand of sorts. It’s said to be an accessory worth $99.99, while the tablet itself will retail at $449.99 for the base model.
The price may be on the steep side, but if there’s one thing for certain, it is that Sony knows how to make distinctive devices. The Xperia NXT success story can be replicated with the Xperia Tablet, but it will need a generous dose of promotion on Sony’s part to make the general public aware of its upcoming tablet offering, unlike last time around.
[via The Verge]
