Sony launches the colourful Xperia M – An affordable Android Jelly Bean phone

Keen to appease the smartphone buyer on a budget as much as those who want cutting edge gadgets, Sony has launched the new Xperia M. It’s a colourful and aimed at those who want a free phone on an affordable monthly tariff, or a cheap smartphone to buy outright on pay as you go.

The Xperia M reminds us of the Xperia Mini from a few years back – perhaps that’s what the ‘M’ stands for – and is rather dinky in size; measuring 124 x 62 x 9.3mm and weighing a feather light 115g.

Embedded into its diminutive frame is a 4-inch TFT touchscreen which sports a resolution of 854 x 480, which of course is comparatively low by today’s high-end smartphone standards, but will still do an ample job. The phone is powered by a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 1GB of RAM and runs Android Jelly Bean 4.1, so you’ll be good to go with the latest batch of Android apps and games without much trouble.

Dual cameras provide options to capture HD video (720p), snap stills and make videos calls, with a 5 megapixel camera on the back and a 0.3 megapixel (VGA) sensor up front.

There’s only 4GB of internal storage inside the phone unfortunately, but you do have a micro SD card slot with which you can bump that number up by up to 64GB. The Xperia M sports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and NFC connectivity, as well as a battery that will see an impressive 10.18 hours of talk time and up to 552 hours of standby from a single charge. Sony’s nifty little notification LED is also present just below the screen – this is one of our favourite design features from the company.

Sony will bring the Xperia M to stores and networks around the world between July and September this year in black or white, or if you’re feeling particularly adventurous there will also be bright yellow and purple shades to choose from. There will also be a dual SIM Sony Xperia M Dual going on sale in certain countries. No word on prices just yet.