It seems like a pretty safe bet that Sony Ericsson's XPERIA Neo will make its debut at Mobile World Congress later this month, but if you're anything like me, you can't wait to find out exactly how well the handset works. Luckily for us, the folks at TechRadar recently spent some hands-on time with the Neo, and they came away fairly impressed. The body is said to be pretty sturdy and not too thick, the front-facing camera takes decent shots compared to the usual VGA FFCs on the market, and the button layout seemed to please the reviewer. On the software side of things, Gingerbread has seemingly breathed new life into Sony Ericsson's Timescape UI, and the ability to pinch the home screen and get an overview of all active widgets was praised as one of the best new features.

While the XPERIA Neo may not have any crazy new feature like the XPERIA Play's slide-out gamepad, it sounds like a pretty decent full-touch Android device. There's no word just yet on a U.S. release, but considering the last XPERIA handset in the U.S. was released on AT&T, I wouldn't be shocked if the Neo followed the same path. How does the Neo sound to you all? Is it one of the phones that's going to kick off a great 2011 for Sony Ericsson, or does it not have enough to hang with the likes of the ThunderBolt and Atrix 4G?

Via TechRadar