The Sony Xperia Z smartphone, Sony's new premier handset that may be the best thing they've offered in years, is now available in France if you preorder with French cell phone provider SFR.
The Xperia Z with SFR will run at high speed in some cities on SFR's 4G LTE network, and if you pre-order the Xperia Z, it will be available in white, black, and violet. The handset will cost €29.00 after you buy a two-year contract from SFR of €79.90 a month and get the €200 rebate. Other plans include a €39.99 per month plan with a €100 rebate, bringing the initial cost of the Xperia Z to €179.00, or a €19.99 per month two-year contract, with which the Xperia Z will cost a heftier €449.90.
SFR says it will start shipping the handset on February 25, according to AndroidAuthority.
Yesterday, we reported that pre-order deals were announced in the United Kingdom for the Xperia Z, offering a sweet $300 headphone set for free for the first 1000 pre-orders or so. It doesn't appear that SFR has any package deals like that in the works.
The Xperia Z is getting a lot of attention for Sony, which has struggled to make a big impact in the smartphone world for the last few years, and it may be the thing that puts Sony back on the map. It has a 1.5GHz quad-core processor with 2GB RAM, a 13-megapixel camera, which takes beautiful low-light shots, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which should be upgraded to 4.2 soon after launch.
But there are really three features of the Xperia Z, which put it beyond the category of a run-of-the-mill smartphone, which you can read about here.