Incoming: AT&T to ship Sony Xperia Ion on June 24 for $99

AT&T has just announced that they’ll start shipping the Sony Xperia Ion on June 24 for $99 on a contract. If that didn’t cause you to look twice, maybe you just forgot all about the phone that Sony unveiled at CES back in January. If you did, you might want to look again. Because again, the phone that’s about to be released on the 24th comes with a pretty nice spec, highlighted by an awesome 4.6-inch 720p HD Reality display powered by Sony’s Mobile Bravia Engine, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and support for 4G LTE data for only 99 bucks with a contract.

The rest of the spec looks equally tasty for that price. The Xperia Ion will also include 16GB of built-in storage that can be expanded with an SD card, PlayStation Certification for mobile gaming, and a 1,900mAh battery to keep things running. At the back, the Xperia Ion also sports a nicely capable snapper, rocking a 12-megapixel camera that features Sony’s Exmor R back-illuminated sensor continuous autofocus, and LED flash.

Besides the usual Wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the phone also comes with NFC tech, with support for NFC tags that automatically changes the phone’s settings depending on the detected tag. While it’s not necessarily slim at 10.8mm, we’re willing to put up with it for all the tech it offers for a dollar short of a Benjamin.

Just one downside though; the Xperia Ion will ship running on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). While an update to Android 4.0 is sure to arrive soon after the launch, it’s a potentially big downside after considering that you can get a hugely more popular Lumia 900 for the same price on AT&T.