It looks like James Bond’s favorite handset company is going to be coming out with an Android-powered smartphone in the near future. The phone, codenamed Rachel, is most impressive not from its design, but from what it promises under the hood. 3D graphics and 3G up to 7.2 Mbps is there, which is a standard in most phones these days, but what really blows me away are the 1 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and an 8 MP autofocusing camera. With the latter under the hood, Rachel is set to very easily become the device of choice for smartphone lovers who want to take some high-res pictures.
What’s perhaps more interesting is that Sony Ericsson has said in the past that it would not be releasing an Android phone until the Android 2.0 OS was ready, which suggests that the successor to Android 1.5, codenamed Cupcake, could be somewhere on the horizon. Given that Android 1.5 was the first build of the OS with a soft keyboard, which made touchscreen-only Android phones possible, we might be able to expect some big things from Android 2.0.
