Introduction and Specifications, Pricing and Availability

To be brutally honest, I haven't touched a single Sony smart device until the Xperia Tablet S. The last Sony phone I even used was an old Sony Ericsson flip phone from many moons ago. In a world completely dominated by the likes of Apple and Samsung, Sony can get lost in the white noise.

Over the few years, Sony has lost their edge in the smartphone market, especially after they had a huge run with Ericsson - but between then and now, not so much. Sony have enjoyed decades as the undisputed Japanese electronics leader, but that shine has slowly been fading over the years.

The Xperia Tablet S actually launched nearly six months ago now, but was pulled from retail shelves after a manufacturing fault was discovered. This didn't fare well for Sony, as the competition fired multiple rounds, launching the Nexus 10, fourth-generation iPad, iPad mini and many more slates.

Can the Xperia Tablet S change things around for the tablet line at least? Let's take a look at the XPERIA Tablet S' specifications.

Luckily the XPERIA Tablet S sports some decent specs, which we're greeted by with NVIDIA's Tegra 3 quad-core processor, cranking along at 1.3GHz, 1GB of RAM and a 9.4-inch display with a 1280x800-pixel screen - this gives us 161 pixels per inch. On the software side of things, we have Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich - not Jelly Bean like most of the other tablet splashing down right now, but it's not terribly disappointing, either.

The Tablet S comes in three sizes, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB but features expandable storage by an SD card slot - and this isn't any normal microSD card slot, but a full-sized SD card slot. A strange addition in this microSD card slot world.

As for pricing, Newegg sell the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB Xperia Tablet S for $399, $499 and $599 respectively. This isn't too bad, but when you consider it against the Nexus 10 and fourth-generation iPad, it's not that great. The fourth-gen iPad is $100 more at every size point, and the iPad mini is $329. If we take a look on the Android side of things, the Nexus 10 is $399 for the 16GB version, and $499 for the 32GB Nexus 10.

So, Sony is sitting in the middle here - offering their tablet with older software than the Nexus 10 features, but with expandable storage. Availability wise, you should be able to get the Tablet S at most electronics stores, with Newegg offering free shipping on the above prices.