Leaked shots of the Sony Ericsson MT27i 'Pepper' emerge

Cast your eyes on the yet to be announced Sony Ericsson MT27i, codenamed 'Pepper'. This is to be the intended successor to the Xperia neo V, which launched back in October.

Based on the design language we've seen from the likes of Sony Ericsson's worst kept secret, the Nozomi, there's definitely some shared DNA here and not just aesthetically.

Along with the hard edges and sharp corners in this prototype (as marked in the images), sources say the hardware will place the Pepper underneath the Nozomi and share a number of elements with its predecessor, the neo V too.

On the inside, the Pepper is expected to utilize an ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500 chipset with a 1GHz dual-core CPU alongside a full 1GB of RAM (the Nozomi uses a 1.5GHz dual-core but also has a gig of RAM). Then we have graphical power courtesy of an Adreno 220 GPU and user storage built in at 16GB, but it has to be said, no SD slot.

The neo V similarities then come into play with a 3.7" display of the same (480x854 pixels) resolution on the front and a similarly equipped 5MP autofocus camera complete with LED flash on the back, also capable of 720p HD video at 30fps.

As you can see above, the front of the Pepper swaps hardware for capacitive Back, Home and Menu keys and on the device's back you can spot a noise-cancelling microphone to the left of what we assume to be a loudspeaker grill.

We hope Sony Ericsson will be unveiling the Pepper in a more complete form once CES kicks off, but if we are made to wait, we can then only assume that they're saving its debut for Mobile World Congress in February.

Source