Sony Xperia ion

Sony Xperia Ion

The Sony Xperia Ion will be the first Sony-branded phone to grace the U.S. market. Coming to AT&T, it packs in 4G LTE speed and a 12-megapixel camera, along with a guaranteed upgrade from Android 2.3.7 to version 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich." Sony Ericsson is in the middle of becoming Sony; while Sony bought out the Ericsson part of the partnership, the transaction still hasn't legally closed. That means a firm still technically called Sony Ericsson is introducing smartphones with the Sony name on them. We played with it a bit at the CES trade show. Slim, sleek, and ultra-sharp, the Ion was among the nicest devices we handled at CES. The Ion has a 4.6-inch, 1280-by-720 pixel HD that looked absolutely gorgeous in person. And because the design of the phone itself is so pared down and trim, it didn't feel unwieldy like some other phones with 4.5-inch+ displays can. There's a built-in HDMI-out port, which means you easily view the content of your phone over an HDTV. The phone is also capable of sharing content via DLNA and Bravia Sync. The Ion is sporting some impressive specs under the hood, as well. It's powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor, and comes with 16GB of built-in memory.