Sony Xperia Ion Goes on Sale in India for 655 USD (525 EUR)

Sony Xperia ion has recently been introduced on the market, though the Japanese company officially unveiled the smartphone back in January at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012, in Las Vegas.

Previously slated to be released in North America via AT&T, Sony Xperia ion hit shelves in other regions as well. It appears that Sony Mobile has decided to release an international version of Xperia ion, which lacks LTE support.

Today, the folks over at AndroidOS report that Sony Xperia ion has just landed in India. Major retailers Snapdeal is now selling the smartphone for no less than Rs 35,999 (655 USD or 525 EUR) outright.

Unfortunately, the retailer confirms that the Xperia ion comes with Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system out of the box, which means owners will have to wait for Sony to push the promised Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade.

The Xperia ion is currently one of the most powerful Android smartphones launched by Sony Mobile. Thus, the device is equipped with a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon processor clocked at 1.5 GHz, an Adreno 220 GPU and 1GB of RAM.

Another strong point of the Xperia ion is the hyper-vibrant 4.55-inch LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution. The screen is scratch-resistant and it is based on Sony Mobile Bravia Engine technology.

For those who value a phone camera over a digital camera, Sony added an enhanced 12-megapixel rear photo snapper, which features autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording. There’s also a secondary 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls.

MicroSD card support and HSPA+ (42Mbps) are included as well, along with HDMI and microUSB ports. Keep in mind that Sony Xperia ion only supports microSIM cards, so you might want to take this into consideration before buying the device.

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