James Bond’s Sony Xperia TL Headed to AT&T With License to Thrill

By Brad Chacos, LAPTOP Contributor | Oct 1, 2012 11:48 AM EST

Sony’s been bulking up its Xperia smartphone line in anticipation of the holiday rush, and its newest addition, the Xperia TL, just happens to be James Bond’s phone in the upcoming Skyfall movie. While the recently released Xperia NXT and Xperia tipo handsets are sold unlocked direct from Sony itself, the new Sony Xperia TL will go the traditional carrier-based route and land on AT&T shelves sometime soon, sporting 4G LTE, a high-resolution 13-megapixel camera, and a bevy of features designed to make finding and watching content as slick an experience as possible.

The show starts with the 4.6-inch, true 720p HD Reality Display, which is powered by the Mobile BRAVIA Engine and a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor. That 13MP camera isn’t all looks; Sony claims it’s fast, too, going from full-blown sleep to first snapshot in just 1.5 seconds, fast enough to photograph secret documents without getting caught. Both the front and the rear camera captures HD video, too, though the front camera is limited to 720p resolution.

Sony built the Xperia TL to share content. The phone can share video via a MHL connection or wirelessly to DLNA-enabled devices, and it includes an NFC chip with “One-touch” connectivity that lets you share music and photos by tapping another phone — similar to what you can find in the Samsung Galaxy S III and other flagship Android devices. Sony includes an Xperia SmartTag with the phone.

All those sharing features won’t do any good without any actual content to share. Sony’s loaded up the Xperia TL with its Walkman, Movies and Album apps, along with wallpaper and ringtones from the Skyfall, according to Engadget.

The Xperia TL will ship with Android 4.0 ICS, but should be upgradeable to Jelly Bean shortly after launch. When will that be? Good question — AT&T and Sony didn’t share any pricing or release date details.

For its part, AT&T seems to be stocking up on phones that target specific niches, with the Xperia TL being joined by a trio of recently announced Samsung smartphones built for phablet fans, smartphone neophytes and people who put a beating on their handsets.