About a year after launching its first smartphone, Sony spinoff VAIO is at it again. But this time instead of shipping a business-focused smartphone with Windows software, the Japanese company is launching an Android model.
In fact, the new VAIO Phone A is basically identical to last year’s Windows-powered VAIO Phone Biz. The only real difference is the operating system.
The VAIO Phone A features a 5.5 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor, 3GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a microSD card slot, dual SIM support, a 2,800 mAh battery, a 13MP camera, and an aluminum body.
The phone goes on sale in Japan starting April 7th for about $223, which means there may be at least one advantage to shipping a phone with last year’s hardware: this year’s price can be reasonably low.
By moving to Android, VAIO also makes the phone a bit more attractive since there’s a much wider ecosystem of third-party apps available for the platform.
There’s no word on whether VAIO plans to offer this phone outside of Japan anytime soon, but the company does sell some of its laptops and tablets internationally.
via Engadget
Anybody want to fund me so i can buy Vaio and build sick laptops with mechanical keyboards.