Sony Xperia GX and SX surface in Japan, Brits cross fingers

Sony has shown off two new additions to its Xperia range of smart phones -- the 4.6-inch Xperia GX and its cheaper little brother, the 3.7-inch Xperia SX. Sadly, they're only being flogged in Japan, for now at least.

The Xperia GX is the big boy of the two. It's packing a 4.6-inch screen with a 720p resolution, which is the same as we've seen on the slightly smaller 4.3-inch Xperia S. It's also using Sony's Bravia technology for the screen so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a bright and vivid viewing experience.

Around the back you'll find a 13-megapixel camera -- it's pretty safe to assume that it's using the same Xmor R CMOS sensor that the Xperia S's 12.3-megapixel snapper uses. We were generally pretty pleased with the camera on the Xperia S, but it didn't reach the top of the smart phone camera pack, so I'm hoping that Sony really pushes for something special here.

It's running on a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, which should keep the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system running pretty smoothly. It's not quad-core, sure, but as there are so few apps that can utilise a quad-core chip, it's likely that you wouldn't notice the difference anyway.

The Xperia SX offers a 3.7-inch screen so is closer in size to Apple's iPhone 4S. It too is running on a 1.5GHz processor but there are cuts made in the camera, with only an 8-megapixel snapper. Still, that's the same we've seen on the spanking new Samsung Galaxy S3. Both phones are LTE equipped, which isn't much use to us Brits until we get 4G data networks.

The two new Xperias are due to land in Japan in the summer. Sadly, there's no word at all on whether we'll see these in our shops. However, we thought the same about the Xperia S when it was first announced so it's quite possible that at least one of these guys will make the leap.

Make sure to keep it CNET UK for the latest on these new blowers and let us know what you think of them in the comments.