today i had a long conversation with a friend of mine. the topic was the SOC being used in current android. earlier it was ARM11 (optimus net, wildfire s, galaxy ace) under 15k, ARM Cortex A8 (defy plus, optimus black)/Qualcomm Scorpion (whole Xperia lineup, desire s, incredible s) in the 15-20k and above that was the dual core version of A8 & scorpion or recently A9 (atrix2, Xperia U/Sola/Go, etc). Cortex A5 was developed with the intent of replacing the ageing ARM11 but it ended up replacing ARM11, Cortex A8 and everyone's favorite Qualcomm Scorpion also. Now if you look at the market, specially in 15-20k section: Galaxy S Duos, Desire V, Optimus L9, Desire X, Xperia J all these pack the slow Cortex A5 based processor. If that was not sufficient, GPU is Adreno 200 i.e. from Adreno 205 we are going back to Adreno 200. It fees like a joke, why will anyone go back to slow hardware when they can afford decently fast ones. 10-15k section is overflowing with all sort of crap mobiles packing big screen but equally poor internals. It feels really strange why manufacturers are taking this kind of move dropping such poor hardware at 15-20k. I'll buy a 2yr old Galaxy S instead of hypercrap mobiles like L7 & Xperia J.
ajay is absolutely right. Xperia Mini, LWW pack strong hardware (not equal to Xperia U though) for their price. Best joke is definitely Optimus L7, Galaxy S Duos & Xperia J. They pack WVGA/WXVGA resolution with Adreno 200. It'll be fun to play games like NFS Most Wanted or Dead Space at 2-3FPS. Actually this will help future buyers who have the mentality of "1Ghz processor is best" when their 1Ghz processor based mobiles start to fail.