Sony’s Xperia Z ‘Yuga’ and ZL ‘Odin’ Show Up in Leaked Press Shots to See in the New Year

We wonder whether or not this leak could be an omen? It’s the 1st of January 2013 – we wish you a Happy New Year by the way – and what should show up on the world wide web but more leaks of Sony’s upcoming smartphones. We’ve been hearing a lot about Sony’s upcoming devices and it would appear that 2013 is the year that Sony are hoping to make a real push into the mobile market. Whether or not they can do this seems to hinge on these new devices and a stellar showing at the fast-approaching CES show in Las Vegas.

Both Yuga and Odin are names that we’ve heard for a long time and I’m sure that more than a few of you out there are fed up with all the leaks – count me in, too. Recently, some more was made known about the two phones, that they could be called the Xperia Z and the Xperia ZL, respectively. Sony seem to be very fond of the alphabet and have named many (read: all) of their phones from 2012 with a letter. Not only can that strategy become confusing for consumers but not entirely clear from a retail standpoint either, so we hope that the Z and the ZL are the last Sony smartphones that rely letters for monikers.

The phones in question are said to be some pretty high-end fare from the Japanese company and should be coming to market with 1080p displays at 5-inches in size and the Snapdragon S4 Pro with 2GB of RAM. Other highlights could well include a 13-megapixel Exmor RS Sensor, but Sony have yet to confirm nor deny any of this. Having a general idea of what’s going to be inside of a device is one thing but knowing what it will look like is a whole other thing entirely. A lot of you reading this would be lying if looks didn’t factor into your current smartphone decision and I’d be lying as well if the looks of the One X didn’t win me over.

With a newly leaked set of press images for the two devices – one for the Xperia Z and another for the Xperia ZL – we have the first glimpses of what they might look like come CES. It’s no surprise to us that they look a lot like the Xperia TL and the Xperia S before it but, what does strike us as a little odd is that the ZL appears to have its front-facing camera at the bottom of the device’s front. There’s not much more that can be drawn from these images but to me, they look like a pair of good-looking devices, the two of them are said to be housed in a glass chassis and so we should know more when full press images are rolled out and we can get a better look at these devices.

The real question is, will these devices give Sony the edge they need to climb the smartphone ladder?