Sony Xperia S

Smart phones get smarter every year, the cunning little blighters, and Sony's first creation without Ericsson might be the smartest mobile yet. The Xperia S (previously known as Nozomi), has a 720p resolution screen and some extremely tempting camera tech, as well as a speedy processor lurking inside.

We've gone hands-on with the Xperia S at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, and we're primed to fill your mind with exciting first impressions. Read on.

The Xperia S should be hitting the UK in March, which means we don't have long to wait.

Design

At first glance the Xperia S doesn't appear to be taking many chances in terms of design. It's a shiny black rectangle. But there's one quirk that pushed up our eyebrows -- a transparent stripe along the bottom, illuminated by the three touch-sensitive buttons that sit just above it.

Sony has pimped its shiny black rectangle with an illuminated transparent stripe.

We think that plastic stripe could prove divisive -- the Xperia S doesn't appear as chic or minimalist as some other mobiles. But it does make the phone look unique, and there's much to be said for that.

Turning the phone around, we noticed it's not especially thin, or at least not as slender as snake-hipped mobiles such as the Motorola Razr or the Samsung Galaxy S2. We wouldn't say it's bulky though -- it'll easily fit in your pocket with no fuss, and it's light as well.

It's not going to be slipping into any Size 00 swimwear unnoticed, but the Xperia S is thin enough to squeeze against your podgy thigh.

The screen is a definite talking point. Measuring 4.3 inches on the diagonal, this panel boasts a 720x1,280-pixel resolution, which is the same as the smashing Samsung Galaxy Nexus. That stonking resolution means on-screen icons look really clear, with text rendering very crisply. This display should do justice to your photos and high-definition video.

The display is also impressively close to the top of the screen itself, which makes the Xperia S look very classy. It's something we noticed on the earlier Xperia Arc and Xperia Arc S, so we're happy to see that narrow gap popping up again.

Processor

On the inside, there's a 1.5GHz dual-core processor powering the Xperia S. While we're keen to put this phone through our brutal benchmark tests, we suspect that chip will make it more than capable of chewing through HD movies or graphically demanding games.

Anecdotally we found the Xperia S felt very fast, with no noticeable lag as we swept through homescreens.

Camera

You'll spy a 12-megapixel camera nestled in the back. That's a very high resolution. The other good news is this snapper is packing Sony's Exmor R sensor.

That sensor was present on the Arc and Arc S, and we were very impressed with the snaps those phones were able to capture. So we've got high hopes for the photo capabilities of the Xperia S. Sony reckons it'll snap with speed too -- apparently it takes just 1.5 seconds to shoot from standby mode.

With a 12-megapixel Exmor R sensor, we've got high hopes for the camera.

Software

So far so good, but there is one notable downside. The Xperia S will arrive running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which isn't the latest version of Google's mobile operating system.

That honour belongs to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. While Sony has promised there's an update on the way soon, it's a little disappointing to see new phones coming out that won't be running the latest edition of Android from day one.

Not the latest version of Android, but if you can content yourself with a Gingerbread entrée, a main course of Ice Cream Sandwich should soon follow.

Still, Gingerbread is not without its charms, and crucially you'll have access to Android Market, where many thousands of apps reside, waiting for you to find and download them.

Outlook

We're mighty excited about the Xperia S. Sony's first phone on its own is shaping up to be a real hardware powerhouse, and it certainly rocks an alluring design. The display and camera are particularly worth of note. It's coming to the UK in March, and we'll have a full review up as soon as humanly possible.