Accidental drowning is one of the most cited reasons for the death of a mobile phone, despite your best efforts to dry it as quickly as possible and bring it back to life it lies there stubbornly refusing to switch on, and when you seek expert advice you hear those dreaded words ‘water damage’. Now Sony have announced that they are releasing two waterproof mobile phones, and this is great news for the clumsy fraternity.
Both of these smartphones will run on dual core processors, but one of them will be shipping with an old version of Google Android. The phones have been named as the Xperia Go and the Xperia Arco S and are scheduled for release in the third quarter of this year, but as yet Sony haven’t said how much they will be selling for once they launch.
The Xperia Go will be sold in the US as the Xperia Advance and will be running on the Android 2.3 Gingerbread when first shipped, although an upgrade to Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich is promised. The Xperia Arco S, on the other hand, will be shipping with the Sony skinned version of Android 4.
The Ice Cream Sandwich, Android’s latest version, made its debut in November 2011 on Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus but now, 6 months later, top manufacturers including Sony, HTC, LG and Motorola are still struggling to offer their customers the software updates for this. The fact that the Xperia Go is shipping with the outdated but nevertheless reliable Gingerbread is a clear indication of this.
This phone is clearly aimed at the lower end of the smartphone market, and has a 3.5” touchscreen with a 480×320 resolution. Inside the Go will be a 1Ghz dual core processor and it will also have a 5mp rear facing camera, colour choices are yellow, black or white. The high end Arco S is a lot more phone and the processor is 1.5Ghz, the camera 12mp and the screen 4.3” with 720p resolution.
