Announcing it’s arrival as their ‘flagship smartphone’, Sony have now confirmed the release of the Xperia S handset, their first foray into the mobile phone market since splitting with former partner Ericsson recently.

The Xperia S comes packed with a 1.5 GHz dual core, 1GB RAM, a fantastic 4.3-inch 720×1280 resolution reality display, NFC support and a 12 MP Exmor R camera. Sony have also confirmed that the Xperia S is to be their first handset release in their new ‘Xperia NXT series’ and will come preinstalled with the Android 2.3 operating system although, sources tell us that Ice Cream Sandwich should be coming to the Xperia S in Spring 2012.

What will become Sony’s first LTE smartphone release in the US has now been officially confirmed by the company. The all new Xperia ion handset will not only be an AT&T exclusive but, a US exclusive release.

Specifications are confirmed to include a huge a 4.6-inch 720×1280 reality display, a powerful 1.5 GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 Processor, 1GB of RAM, NFC support and a 12 MP Exmor R camera. Android 2.3 will come preinstalled with an expected update to Android 4.0 soon. Obviously the handset will feature full 4G LTE connectivity and the modem is configured to work with AT&T services.

There’s still a few hours until Sony present their press conference at CES 2012 in Las Vegas but, AT&T who have just held their press conference have announced several new phones coming to their network, including the Sony Xperia ION.

Firstly, from AT&T’s side this is the first Sony [Ericsson] Xperia phone to feature LTE technology in the US and will be exclusive to AT&T.

The annual CES event is taking place in Las Vegas this week. The trade show is running between January 10th and 13th but, Sony have a press event planned for today where new Xperia models are set to be announced.

The press event is due to start at 5pm GMT and you can watch the press event live from Sony’s website here. We’re expecting to see “something big” which is likely to come in the form on an Xperia Arc successor. Other Xperia models that are expected to be unveiled include an Xperia Neo successor as well as an Xperia Mini successor.

To all our readers, we wish you all the best of luck for 2012!