19
Apr
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Sony Walkman Z Review: A Few Great Ideas Wrapped In A Flawed And Outmoded Device

Posted by in Other Reviews, Reviews, Sony, Walkman Z
Last Updated: April 30th, 2012

Sony is a company going through major changes - it recently announced plans to lay off 10,000 plus of its workers (some of those through buyouts), has instated a new CEO, and just had one of its worst fiscal years ever. It also recently ended its Android smartphone partnership with Ericsson, and plans to now produce handsets under its own name. It's a difficult and uncertain time for Sony, and the Walkman Z, unfortunately, seems to be an excellent microcosm of the company's larger problems.

There comes an end to the life of every great consumer electronic. The portable CD player.

18
Apr
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Sony Wants To Make Sure Apps Work Properly On Xperia Devices, Offers Loaner Phones To Developers For Free

Posted by in Development, News, Sony

All manufacturers want to make sure that apps work properly on their devices. Of course, the best way to make sure an app works on any given phone is to actually test the app on the device in question. For developers, though, that could cost a substantial amount of money - just think about how many Android devices are out there at the moment.

As an answer to this quandary, though, Sony has come up with a unique plan to allow developers to borrow Xperia devices. For free.

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The deal is pretty simple: Sony is willing to offer up a few of its more popular devices  as loaners for developers to test their apps on for 30 days.

13
Apr
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Sony Begins Rollout Of Ice Cream Sandwich To The Xperia Arc S, Neo V, and Ray In Nordic Countries

Posted by in News, Xperia Active (Satsuma), Xperia Arc (Anzu, X12), Xperia Arc S, Xperia Mini / Mini Pro (Smultron / Mango), Xperia Neo (Hallon), Xperia Neo V (Haida), Xperia Play (Zeus, PlayStation Phone), Xperia Ray (Urushi, ST18i)

Sony has done an excellent job at being transparent with its progress on the bringing Ice Cream Sandwich to a number of Xperia devices. It has kept users aware of what's going on throughout the process, as well as shared alpha and beta builds along the way. Now, though, it looks like the beta days are behind them and the build is ready for prime time for a certain Xperia devices.

The rollout will being with unlocked variants of the Xperia arc s, neo v, and ray (seriously, Sony, stop with the lowercase device names. It looks awful) in Nordic Countries and will continue over the next four to six weeks.

05
Apr
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[Video] Watch America's Got Talent Finalist Team iLuminate And Labrinth Rock The Socks Off Sony's Xperia S Launch Party

Posted by in News, Sony, Videos, Xperia S (Nozomi)

Team iLuminate, one of the most visually impressive and creative dance troupes who just happened to win be one of the finalists in America's Got Talent last year, recently joined Labrinth in this stunning performance at the Sony Xperia S party. There really isn't much to say here - just watch:

I've been a huge fan of iLuminate, and while this isn't by far their most original performance, it was still quite a treat. Plus, Labrinth isn't so bad either.

As a bonus, here are some videos you absolutely need to watch:

04
Apr
2012-04-04 07h08_25

CyanogenMod 9 Nightlies Drop For Sony Xperia Arc And Neo

Posted by in Development, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News, Xperia Arc S, Xperia Neo V (Haida)

CyanogenMod (CM) has long been the modding community's custom ROM of choice, and for good reason: it takes the goodness that is basic Android (AOSP) and adds a hearty dose of all-around improvement. The list of devices supported by CM is quite a long and impressive one (truth be told, they do a better job of supporting devices than the manufacturers do), and last night, cutting-edge nightly CM9 releases dropped for the Sony Xperia Arc (Anzu) and Xperia Neo (Hallon).

Definition: A "nightly" is a bleeding edge release that is built on a daily basis, usually at night after a full day's worth of new code has been committed.

30
Mar
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Ice Cream Sandwich Updates For 2011 Sony Xperia Phones Starting In Mid-April, But Carrier Restrictions May Apply

Posted by in Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, Live w/ Walkman (Coconut), Sony, Xperia Active (Satsuma), Xperia Arc (Anzu, X12), Xperia Arc S, Xperia Mini / Mini Pro (Smultron / Mango), Xperia Neo (Hallon), Xperia Neo V (Haida), Xperia Play (Zeus, PlayStation Phone), Xperia Pro (Iyokan), Xperia Ray (Urushi, ST18i)

Before Sony Ericsson became Sony Mobile, the company seemed committed to developing an Android 4.0 update, going so far as to release alpha ROMs for a number of Xperia devices, and more recently a beta for the Xperia Play. Here we are, a quarter of the way into 2012, and Xperia owners are still gnawing on last year's official Gingerbread. Although, there may finally be a light at the end of the tunnel; the Sony Mobile blog has announced that the first Android 4.0 updates will roll out to select Xperia phones in mid-April. Don't get too excited when wireless carriers are involved though.

22
Mar
sony-logo

Sony Announces Tablet P And Tablet S Ice Cream Sandwich Updates For The End Of April

Posted by in News, Tablet P, Tablet S

Good news for anyone who bought one of the recent Sony Android tablets - namely the Tablet P and Tablet S - the update to Android 4.0 should be coming your way next month. The update will not only bring all of the benefits that ICS has to offer, but also a feature that will allow Tablet users to access and watch programs they've recorded on their compatible Sony Blu-Ray recorder.

s23 sony-tab

Also included in the update is a new feature called Small Apps, which is quite similar to Samsung's Mini-Apps on its Galaxy Tab series. Included in the Small Apps micro-suite is a floating calculator, remote control, and a browser window that will run on top of other windows, offering a true multi-tasking experience.

20
Mar
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Sony Releases Open Source Archive For The Xperia S, Includes Handy Build Instructions

Posted by in Development, News, Sony, Xperia S (Nozomi)

Sony released the Xperia S open source archive today, providing all the tools necessary to build a kernel and start cooking up ROMs for the Xperia S from Sony's source code. In a post to Sony Mobile's developer blog today, the company also noted that the opening of the Xperia S archive marks the first time Sony has published source code for a product built around Qualcomm's Snapdragon S3.

XperiaS

The post goes on to advise that in order to flash the software, users will need to complete a few extra steps and run a special script (which is linked, along with a proprietary firmware file, in the original post).

13
Mar
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Sony Unveils The Xperia Sola With 'Floating Touch', Lets You Highlight Items On-Screen Without Actually Touching The Device

Posted by in News, Xperia sola (Pepper)

When touchscreen phones first became mainstream, countless people talked about how "impractical" a touch-only device was. Since then, touch devices have become the norm in the smartphone realm, with basically every modern high-end phone packing at least some sort of touch input.

Sony is taking the touch revolution to a whole new level with the Xperia sola, though, by bringing a new feature to the table called "floating touch" that allows the user to simply hover their finger over items in the browser and highlight them, much like using a mouse.

Not only does the sola incorporate this new floating touch technology, but it's also NFC enabled and comes packaged with two Sony SmartTags which can be customized to handle up to ten different commands each.

01
Mar
sony_mwc2012

Sony Spokesman Says The Company Likely Won't Go Quad-Core Until 2013, Cites Battery And Performance Concerns

Posted by in News, Sony

Sony brought some sleek new devices to MWC, but we were surprised to see nothing truly groundbreaking - specifically, a lack of quad-core CPUs. CNET Asia got a few minutes with Stephen Sneeden, product marketing manager for Sony Mobile, and he clarified the companies stance, saying that we likely won't see quad-core phones from the company until early 2013.

"We're going to join quad-core when we feel that the performance matches the battery efficiency," he said. "Because right now we don't feel that is there. What we are going to be doing in the second half of the year is moving to the Cortex A15 architecture, which we feel outperforms the current quad-core architecture.

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