We just got what may have been our first glimpse at Sony’s LT29i Hayabusa, which we’ve heard may be scheduled for a July release. The same leaked roadmap that provides that detail also mentions a July arrival for the ST21i Tapioca. We heard some rumored specs for that model back in January, but it’s kept a low profile since then. Now, a few images of what’s supposed to be the Tapioca have emerged, showing us what we might hope to expect from the smartphone.

The Tapicoa’s specs are largely unchanged from the rumors we heard earlier. That makes this Xperia out to be a pretty low-end handset by all standards, with a single-core 800MHz Qualcomm chip under the hood and only 512MB of RAM. Look for the ST21i to feature a small 3.2-inch display with an HVGA resolution, and to use a three-megapixel sensor for its camera. With such restrictive hardware, performance will be quite limited; video capture is limited to VGA at best.

From the apparent bulk of this phone, along with its unusual, raised display, you might think the Tapioca was hiding-away a QWERTY keyboard, but there’s no such hardware here. There’s another Sony model, the Tapicoa DS, mentioned on the old roadmap that’s supposed to arrive this August; perhaps that might be a hardware variant that actually offers such a keyboard.

Source: Techblog.gr (Google Translate)

Via: Xperia Blog