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Vaio announces Windows 10 smartphone – no, really

Former Sony PC arm Vaio has unexpectedly announced the launch of a classy business-focused Windows 10 smartphone.

Vaio and Windows 10 Mobile – two embattled brands fighting to remain relevant in saturated tech markets. Sounds like the perfect match to us.

That’s certainly how Vaio sees it. The company has announced a new Windows 10 Mobile-powered smartphone, the Vaio Phone Biz. As the name suggests, this is a business-focused phone with a classy aluminium body.

Things are decidedly more mid-range when it comes to the specifications, however. The Phone Biz has a 5.5-inch 1080p LCD display, a Snapdragon 617 CPU, 3GB of RAM, and a 13-megapixel camera.

The Vaio Phone Biz has 16GB of internal storage, which can be bolstered by means of a microSD slot. There’s a healthy 2,800mAh battery powering it all.

Vaio

Related: What is Continuum?

Despite these middle-of-the-road specs, the Vaio Phone Biz is said to support Microsoft’s Continuum feature, which turns the phone into a heavily stripped-back Windows 10 PC for light tasks.

Vaio’s new phone is going on sale in Japan in April at a cost of ¥50,000, which works out to around £290. There’s no news of a wider international release as yet, but it’s good to see another third party manufacturer making Windows 10 Mobile hardware – and good-looking hardware at that.

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Think Vaio will do a better job than Microsoft? Let us know in the comments below.

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