Press render of Sony Xperia SP spotted in the wild

After the recent launch of the flagship Xperia Z, Sony seems to be gunning for the mid-ranged smartphones market. According to the XperiaBlog, press renders of the company's mid-end phone, dubbed the Xperia SP, have shown up. The smartphone seems to have gone through minimal changes from what we saw earlier in the leaked pictures.

Rumours are floating around that the phone will be making its debut next week, but as with all other rumours, the credibility of this one is questionable. We’ve been seeing a lot of rumours and leaks about the smartphone, referred to in development circles as the HuaShan. In February, we got a good look at the smartphone and how it looks compared to the Xperia V. The Xperia SP will be powered by a 1.7GHz processor from Qualcomm and an Adreno 320 GPU. The phone also appears to have a slightly larger screen than that of the Xperia V, measuring at 4.5-inches.

The Xperia SP seems to have gone through minimal changes in appearance through development

It also has a lock button on the side, as is the norm for Sony’s recent handsets. The phone will be capable of LTE, and the material of the body seems to be plastic. The back of the handset can be removed to reveal a microSIM and microSD card slot, but the battery doesn’t seem to be replaceable. The Xperia SP will run on Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean out of the box.

The name of the handset, earlier dubbed the C530X, was revealed alongside the C210X, which will be named the Xperia L. The Xperia L is expected to run on a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon chipset, which could either be the MSM8227 or the MSM8627. The graphics of the handset will be handled by an Adreno 305 GPU and it will have an FWVGA resolution display—480 x 854—with virtual buttons. It will run on Jelly Bean 4.1.2.

A new Xperia phone has popped up this month, known only as the C670X. In terms of raw specs, the Sony C670X is expected to come with a slightly smaller display than the Xperia Z (Model number: C660X). Its 4.8-inch display will only be slightly larger than the HTC One’s screen and will have a full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. C670X will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064T) SoC with each of its four cores clocked at 1.8GHz. The processor is coupled with Adreno 320 graphics and 2GB RAM.

There’s more: C670X will have 32GB of internal storage space, and going by Sony’s recent phones, it could also feature a microSD card slot to augment that. On the back is a 13-megapixel camera based on the Exmor RS sensor, the same one seen on the Xperia Z, so you can expect it to have HDR video too. XperiaBlog says the phone is due to launch in mid-2013 with Android 4.2.