Sony recently broke away from the tie in the company had with its one time partner Ericsson, but they have remained busy in the mobile phone sector by recently announcing the Xperia Neo L, which carries 2011 hardware.

Many will think the device is the replacement for Xperia Neo, but as Xperia blog are reporting the device will be powered by a Snapdragon MSM8255 single core 1 GHz processor with Adreno 205 graphics. The device that is also known by the not so fancy MT25i name will have a 4-inch display with 854 x 480 resolution, 512MB of RAM, 1GB of on board storage, and a five megapixel shooter capable of 720p video capture, and a VGA unit on the front.

The new device looks pretty similar to the Xperia Play but without the joypad, and it has the same hardware buttons that are found on the Xperia Play. Size wise the Neo L measures 120.0 x 61.0 x 12.8 mm, which is also nearly the same except for the fact its 3mm thinner.

What will go down well with possible purchasers of the Xperia Neo L is the fact it will come running the Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system straight out of the box, as Sony has so far released the Xperia P, Xperia S, and Xperia U devices that came with Android Gingerbread 2.3 along with a promise of an ICS upgrade sometime this year.

At the moment the handset looks set to hit the Chinese market and it is not known if anywhere else will get to see it, but if it does venture to UK shores expect it to be at the budget end of the market. Currently there are no details when the handset will be available to consumers in China.

Do you like the look of the Sony Xperia Neo L?