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.

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.

We heard the rumours a couple of weeks ago that Sony were looking to buy Ericsson out of their joint partnership which started 10 years ago this month. We can now confirm that Sony have paid Ericsson €1.05 billion in exchange for Ericsson’s 50 percent stake.

Sony will have cross licensing of five patent families which will be essential for Sony to fully move into the smart phone market. With Sony assuming full ownership of the venture, they will now be able to integrate their smartphones with their other products even more closely, such as the Sony Tablet S like other manufacturers are doing, such as Samsung and Apple.

According to a report on the Wall Street Journal, Sony Corp is looking to buy off Ericsson’s shares in their joint mobile business. The Sony Ericsson partnership celebrated 10 years together this week but, now it looks like Sony is close to finalising a deal with Ericsson that will buy them out of the joint venture, making Sony the sole shareholder. It’s reported that Sony are keen to take over the partnership as it would allow the manufacturing of mobile phones, tablets, laptops and gaming consoles could be consolidated. This would also mean, Sony would have complete control over the smartphone strategy and would be more able to keep the same UI amongst various products, such as tablets and phones like Samsung and Apple have. As it stands at the moment, the Sony tablets have a Sony UI over the top of Android, which varies significantly to the Sony Ericsson UI found on the Xperia smartphones.

It’s been ten years since Sony and Ericsson started their joint venture. Ericsson was already a major player in the mobile phone market and joining with Sony meant they could expand their technology even further. The joint venture began October 1st 2001 but, it wasn’t until 2002 that the first Sony Ericsson phone was released, the Sony Ericsson T68i, an upgrade to the Ericsson T68 which at the time of launch was one of the most feature packed phones on the market. The T68 was the first Ericsson phone to include a color screen and when the T68i was released, it included two-way MMS with full SMIL implementation for the first time. The Sony Ericsson T68i did not include a camera but, a camera add on was released near the end of the handsets life cycle.