Five months after it was announced, the Sony Xperia ion will be available on AT&T June 24th for $99.99 on a two-year contract. Just as we saw at CES, the Xperia ion will run on AT&T's LTE network, feature a 4.6-inch 1280 x 720 "HD Reality display," 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and a 12-megapixel camera. The Xperia ion is also seeing release a bit later than the promised "Spring" window, but at least the date is in line with recent rumors and the venerable Xperia tradition of shipping later than expected. Sony ins't specifying the version of Android that the ion is running, but at CES we saw the unmistakable signs of Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread — one wonders whether Sony has used the intervening months to bring that up to Ice Cream Sandwich.

Those intervening months haven't been kind to the ion in the competition department, either, with the HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy S III both garnering more attention on AT&T and beating it to market. Nevertheless, Sony it taking its shot on the 24th at getting back into the US smartphone game, and at $99.99 it will be doing it at half the price of those two competitors.