Sony has unveiled its 10.1-inch Android tablet, Xperia Tablet Z, which is due for release in Japan in the Spring.

The company made the announcement on its Japanese Web site, boasting a new slate almost 3mm thinner than Apple's iPad and over 150g lighter.

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Most remakable of all, the Japanese company says the tablet has "waterproof and dustproof performance".

"[The tablet features] "Reality Display", which enables the representation of high-brightness and high-definition video WUXGA display of about 10.1 inches, along with "Mobile Bravia (* 2) Engine 2", [for] more vivid and beautiful image content representation," said the company in a translation done by Google. 

Sony is a late entrant to the tablet market and debuted its first device in 2011, making it the last among the world's top 10 tablet makers to tap into the demand triggered by Apple's iPad.

Its last offering, the Xperia Tablet S, had failed to to generate sales when it was released in September, as it was widely seen as  too expensive, had a dim screen, and ran an outdated version of Android Honeycomb. Worst of all, the company temporarily recalled the device in October after it uncovered a small gap between the display panel and the device's back case, which could potentially allow liquids to leak through and damage the tablet.

The company has sought to address both these issues as its new Xperia Tablet Z will feature Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box, and be water resitant.

The device comes with a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and  32GB of internal storage with microSD expansion. It also has an impressive 8.1-megaixel camera equipped with Sony's Exmor R CMOS Sensor for mobile, S-Force Front Surround 3D virtual surround sound, as well as support for NFC data transfer and LTE technology.

Noriko Shoji, Sony's Tokyo-based spokeswoman, told Bloomberg that the device may debut in Japan as soon as March before appearing elsewhere. The price is yet to be decided.

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