Sony at Mobile World Congress 2012

Just days after the closure of Sony's deal to buy out Ericsson from their decade-old Sony Ericsson joint venture, we've sat down with US product marketing manager Stephen Sneeden here at Mobile World Congress to discuss the phone brand's past, present, and future.

By all accounts, last year's Xperia Play was well off the mark of the notion of a true "PSP phone," a dream that has haunted and eluded the gaming community for years (more on the Xperia Play in a bit). With the launch of the PS Vita, there's renewed discussion on the topic; Sony already has experience integrating 3G into the platform, and from there, it's a relatively short leap to build out a full-fledged handset. Sony chief Kaz Hirai himself has hinted that porting the Vita's OS to phones and tablets could be a compelling proposition, which — if implemented correctly — could short-circuit many concerns about the death of the dedicated portable gaming market.

Performance seems decent enough — no obvious lagging in the time we had. The Sony rep couldn't give us a price, except to say that it will launch as the most affordable Xperia phone — and depending on that price, we could see it holding up pretty well in that tier.

We just had a quick chance to play with the new Sony Xperia P, and... it's a slightly smaller riff on the Xperia S packed into an aluminum unibody case. The big draw is the "WhiteMagic" LCD display, which adds an additional stripe of white pixels to the traditional RGB layout. Sony says it's a dramatically better display and allows the phone to perform better in daylight — it certainly looks beautiful, with super sharp text, excellent contrast, and solid viewing angles. It's only qHD, sadly, but it's nice to see a midrange phone with a highish-end display.

Software-wise, you're looking at Android 2.3.7 with a ton of Sony customizations — Sony says it'll deliver an Android 4.0 update in the middle of Q2. Obviously that's disappointing, but there's still some interesting stuff going on: integration with all of Sony's content services, and a zero-lag camera that can go from "sleep to snap" in just a second. There's also the SmartDock with TV Launcher app, which mirrors the phone's display on a TV over HDMI. Output is at 1080p, and you can control the phone with your TV remote over HDMI-CEC. If you've got an older TV, the dock has two USB ports, so you can plug in a wireless keyboard and mouse and control the phone that way. It's all a little clunky and weird since the TV Launcher UI is just a bunch of shortcuts to regular Android apps that look silly on a TV, but it works.

To go along with Sony's new Xperia phones, the company is lauching a SmartDock to connect your Xperia smartphone to your TV — and if you add a keyboard and mouse, the company claims you can have a "full PC experience." On its own, the SmartDock outputs via HDMI to allow your phone to serve as a media hub for music, videos, and photos. If you've got a newer TV, you can control the phone with your remote control over HDMI-CEC to navigate the media on your phone and play with Android apps, and you can also use a keyboard and mouse. It's not really a "full PC experience," since that's pretty much all you get, but it's certainly something. The SmartDock includes USB ports and for hooking up your peripherals with cables — we're checking to see if Bluetooth works as well.

Sony introduced the Xperia Ion at CES last month, but now Sony Mobile President Bert Nordberg has announced that the handset will launch in markets around the world this summer. The handset has a 4.6-inch 1280 x 720 display with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, NFC support, and 12-megapixel camera. There's no word on whether the LTE radio will be carried over into the global version, though.

In our hands-on at CES, we liked the Ion's solid feel and lightweight construction, and were impressed by the display and camera. Sony hasn't been any more forthcoming on when the Xperia Ion will see an upgrade to Android 4.0, but as things stand the software adds only a couple of light customizations over the stock Android 2.3.7 experience.

It will come to the market globally in the middle of Q2 2012; T-Mobile UK has just confirmed that they plan to carry the phone and launch it during that timeframe.

Be sure to check out our hands on!