Sony Xperia P priced and dated for UK

The Sony Xperia P will go on sale in just under three weeks time in the UK, product listings on online retailers reveal.

SIM-free specialist Clove, whose stock-in-trade is getting new kits upfront and early, is listing the Android-powered Xperia P for release on May 7th with a price of £330.

Rival retailer Expansys, which also deals principally in contract-free smartphones, is offering the mid-range addition to the Xperia range for a touch more at £339.

That ought to equate to a contract price of around £20-25 per month over a two-year term when the phone is ranged by UK carriers.

The second Sony phone since the tech and audio giant split from long-time mobile partner Ericsson, the Xperia P debuts Sony’s WhiteMagic display technology for its undeniably pin-sharp, four-inch touchscreen.

It's also home to an eight megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash, a sinewy 1 GHz dual-core processor and 16GB of storage– all wrapped in an aluminium unibody shell.

Like the Xperia U and Xperia S, Near Field Communications (NFC) support is also front and centre, tying in with Sony’s range of NFC tags that allow phone settings to be changed with a single swipe or tap.

The tags are intended to make it easier to separate work-life from home-life, by allowing users to turn off the handset's office settings the instant they arrive home.

Somewhat disappointingly, the handset runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) out of the box. However, an update to the shiny, new Ice Cream Sandwich edition of Google's OS is scheduled at some stage during Q2.

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