Well, sometimes Google’s ads have the unique ability of revealing products ahead of their announcement. The Sony Xperia Ion may have been announced back at CES 2012, but no carrier in the States has confirmed a launch date yet. However, a recent ad spotted in Gmail shows the Ion as coming to the States in June.
Google’s advertising department rushed on this one and revealed the launch date on AT&T for the LTE smartphone. The banner in case was found by a reader of Droid Matters, who sent in the tip. The Xperia Ion is a 10.8mm thick phone, that weighs 144 grams and sports a 4.55 inch 720p screen with Mobile Bravia Engine tech. Its specs are very much like the ones of the Xperia S, except for the fact that this model has a microSD card slot and 16GB of storage, while the Xperia S lacked a card slot.
The Ion offers LTE, NFC, WiFi, DLNA and a 12 megapixel camera that I’m sure is the same sensor as the one on the Xperia S. With a bit of luck you’ll get your unit already updated to Android 4.0, since it would be ridiculous for AT&T to sell a flagship phone like this with Gingerbread. The CPU inside the newcomer is a Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon.
