The decline in the sales of PCs in the past few years led many companies like Lenovo and HP to enter the smartphone market. In 2014, Sony sold off its VAIO computer division to quit the PC business and focus on mobile. Last year, VAIO Phone Biz, a business-centric smartphone running on Windows 10 was launched in Japan. The phone has been relaunched now with VAIO Phone A moniker and it sports the same specs as Phone Biz. However, the Phone A is running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS.
The VAIO Phone A has a 5.5-inch display that supports full HD resolution of 1,920 x 1080 pixels. It is driven by Snapdragon 617 SoC ad 3 GB of RAM. The internal storage space available on it is 16 GB. It also features a microSD card slot.
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For photography, it is equipped with single LED enabled 13-megpixel rear camera and a frontal snapper of 5-megapixel. It features the usual connectivity features like dual-SIM dual standby, v4.2 Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi 802.11ac. It houses a 2,800 mAh battery. The VAIO Phone Biz running on Windows 10 Mobile is a single-SIM supporting phone, but the Phone A supports dual-SIM dual standby.
Apart from the similarities in specs, the VAIO Phone A also seems to sport the same aluminum design as Phone Biz. It measures 156 x 77 x 8.3 mm and its weight is 167 grams and it sports Silver color.
The phone will be releasing in Japan on April 7 with a pricing of 24,800 Yen ($223) excluding tax. Its pre-orders will begin from March 30 in the country. It is likely that the smartphone would be exclusively available in Japan. It supports 1/4/6/8/11/19 WCDMA bands and it also supports LTE bands like 1/3/8/9/21 LTE bands. It is likely that it may arrive in the U.S. and Europe at some point.
The VAIO Phone A is the second Android phone from the company. Its first smartphone was VAIO Phone that was released in March 2015.
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