Sony Unveils S and P Android Tablets at IFA 2011

On the IFA 2011 Show in Berlin, Sony has officially unveiled the S and P tablets, a pair of Android 3.1 Honeycomb-based devices focused on entertainment and formerly known as S1 and S2.

Sony S and P Tablets

The Sony S has a 9.4-inch display and an asymmetric design resembling a folded magazine for a more convenient feeling in the hand. The P has dual 5.5-inch displays, a calm-shell design, and a book-style user interface, allowing two different apps to run on the separate screens simultaneously. Both displays can show a single app, and one of the screens can be used as a keyboard or gaming controller.

The tablets run a custom Sony UI and are powered by the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core 1GHz processor and graphics. The PlayStation Certified S and P support DLNA, as well as Wi-Fi, and optional 3G / 4G mobile broadband connectivity, while for 720p video capture there’s a 5MP camera on the back sides. The former includes 16GB or 32GB of storage, while the latter has 4GB only.

What’s interesting is a built-in infra-red controller with accompanying app, allowing users to control not only Sony, but various TVs and CE devices from various manufacturers. However, the devices can not display content on an external monitor due to a lack of HDMI or any other video output port.

Sony has chosen not to launch a separate app download center. Instead, there’s a software section with a list of recommended apps which can be downloaded from the standard Android Market.

Now about the pricing and availability. In Europe, the S and P will retail for a base price of 479 and 599 Euros, respectively. In the US, they’ll start at $499 and $599.

Note: This post was published on April 27 and updated on August 31, 2011.

2 thoughts on “Sony Unveils S and P Android Tablets at IFA 2011”

  1. Mark, both should have the same CPUs and RAM inside. Maybe this is one of the cases when you run the same benchmark on the same hardware and get different results. We hadn’t time to do them multiple times. The performance should be really the same on both S and P.

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