Sony has quietly started shipping the tiny Xperia Sola in Europe. The Sola is not a part of Sony's NXT series, but it is a quite interesting handset nonetheless.
Unlike NXT-series phones, it lacks the gimmicky transparent bar with nav buttons, but it has a microSD slot and floating touch. The Sola is a compact mid-range phone, but it has a pretty nice spec, including a dual-core ST Ericsson processor at 1GHz, 512MB of memory, 8GB of internal storage and a 5MP camera. It rocks a 3.7-inch 854x480 screen and measures 116x59x9.9mm. At 107g it is relatively light and we think Sony's designers did a pretty good job on this year's crop of Xperia handsets.
However, what we find really interesting about the Sola is that it is the cheapest dual-core Android phone on the market today. Retailers are listing it for as little as €259, which sounds like a pretty fair deal. Surprisingly, the upcoming Xperia U is already listed at about €220, so Sony will end up with the two cheapest dual-core phones on the market. In its heyday, Sony was notorious for overpricing its gear, oh dear how things have changed. On a related note, the Xperia U and Xperia P should also start shipping by the end of the month.
The only downside to the Sola is the OS. Sony is still sticking to Gingerbread, but an update should be rolled out quite soon. Hopefully.
You can check out the listings here.