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Hands-on: Sony plays it safe with new Android phones and tablets

The Japanese manufacturer's new Android phones - the Xperia T, V and J - all look very similar, while Sony's revamped Android tablet is a more stylish affair than before
By David Meyer, Contributor
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1 of 5 David Meyer

There's little bad to say about the design of Sony's latest Android devices, but, certainly on the phone side, there is a certain uniformity to them.

The template is set by the Xperia T, the 4.55-inch-screened flagship being modeled here by Sony chief Kazuo Hirai at IFA in Berlin.

The device has a 13MP camera and a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, which is not quite as chunky as the quad-core processors that power recent flagships from Samsung and Asus.

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2 of 5 David Meyer

These, believe it or not, are four different phone models.

The only immediately apparent differences are screen sizes. The mid-range Xperia V (top left) has a 4.3-inch screen. The relatively budget-specced Xperia J (top right) has a four-inch screen and the Xperia T (bottom right) and TX (bottom left) have 4.55-inch screens.

The Xperia TX is a variant on the Xperia T that is targeted at Asian markets. It has a slightly different industrial design to the T.

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3 of 5 David Meyer

This is the Xperia Tablet S, the company's new Android slab.

Unlike Sony's new smartphones, the Xperia Tablet S comes with top-of-the-line internals, being powered by a quad-core Tegra 3 chipset.

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4 of 5 David Meyer

On the outside, the biggest difference between the new Xperia Tablet S and its predecessor, the Sony Tablet S, is that this time Sony hasn't tried to make it look like an airplane wing.

The company has stuck to the idea of having a  rear lip, though, even if it is markedly less pronounced. This time round it seems a bit more stylish, and it certainly continues to differentiate Sony's Android tablets from the relatively identikit offerings of its rivals.

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5 of 5 David Meyer

Another look at the Xperia Tablet S's design, this time from the rear.

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