Rumor: Sony Xperia Lotus: The successor to the 3 inch Xperia Active

Announced 11 months ago, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active (pictured above, reviewed in the video below) is a device that most people ignored since it didn’t have bleeding edge hardware specifications. We’re talking a 3 inch 480 x 320 pixel display, 1 GHz single core processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a 5 megapixel camera. What made the Active special though was that it was seemingly indestructible. Waterproof, dustproof, shockproof, lifeproof, you couldn’t kill the thing if you tried! According to UnwiredView, there’s going to be a successor that should appeal to a geekier audience. It’s codenamed the Xperia Lotus and it’ll feature a display that pushes 854 x 480 pixels, it’ll have a dual core ST-Ericsson processor, and it’ll probably ship with Ice Cream Sandwich. When will it actually be announced, when will it hit the market, and how much will it cost? We don’t have answers to those questions, though we predict that Sony will reveal the Lotus this summer.

It’s tough to talk about a phone we know nothing about, so let’s raise an important question: Why is Sony the only company that actually tries to make phones that are reasonably sized? Samsung and Huawei sell devices with screens that measure less than 3.5 inches diagonal, but they’re typically low end garbage. Sony on the other hand, they’ve been experimenting with form factors as small as 2.55 inches in the X10 Mini, and as unique as 3.3 inches in the Xperia Ray. It feels as if Sony is the opposite of Samsung, who was insane enough to launch a 5.3 inch smartphone/tablet, but to the shock of many actually managed to sell well over 5 million units of that ghastly beast.

So are you excited about small screen devices? It seems like they’re somehow inferior when everyone is talking about 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8 inch flagship phones. Rumor has it that the next iPhone will be the first iPhone to ship with a screen that’s larger than 3.5 inches. Even Cupertino is going bigger!