Sony lifts the curtain on the Xperia SL

Sony has finally unveiled the much-rumoured successor to its Xperia S handset: the Xperia SL.

According to a recently added listing on the Sony Mobile website, the Xperia SL will trump its predecessor's 1.5GHz dual-core processor with a nippy 1.7GHz Snapdragon dual-core S3 CPU.

Surprisingly, however, the processor appears to be the only major upgrade to the blower, with Sony opting to use the same-sized 4.3-inch screen and same 12.1-megapixel camera as the previous model.

The handset will run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) out of the box, and come in four colours: silver, black, white, and pink.

We were rather fond of the Xperia S, deeming it "the best handset to be released by Sony (Ericsson) thus far".

Though Sony doesn't seem to have pushed the boat out in terms of hardware upgrades, we're still interested to see what improvements the Xperia SL brings to the table.