By admin
28th September 2010.
09:14
Monthly Archives: September 2010
This morning my friends over at our Extras department announced a new very cool accessory.
It’s called the Sony Ericsson LiveView™ and is kind of a new thing altogether so not that easy to describe, perhaps this video that Albin and Marcus put together does it best :-)
What is does is that is sits on your wrist (with an included wrist band) or as a clip somewhere and gives you a quick view of what’s going on in your phone. Like a second wireless interactive mini display. This means that you can have your phone in you pocket or in a bag and still be alerted with notifications on incoming stuff or keept track of other things. It has an OLED screen with 128×128 pixels and some interaction elements such as 4-way navigation (touch sensors at the front, just at the edges of the screen) and two hard buttons, one for power on and off and for menu selection.
There are some given use-cases included already from launch, like notifications on incoming calls and messages, Facebook status updates etc. The cool thing however is of course that this device is available for use by any application that wants to. Think of this as kind of the usual Android desktop widgets but instead in a physical form, away from your phone. This makes this device quite an enabler for lots of cool ideas going forward. As you are aware there are thousands of great Android apps out there and I’m sure many of them could improve and evelove by use this device in cool ways. Then there might also even be some new applications ideas that are possible to realise now with this device that wasn’t even possible without it.
It will be sold as a stand alone device and start selling in around the same timeframe as our X10 products are updated (it needs Android 2.x to work). It will also be sold in different packages from us and from our partners. The currently finalised example is an “Experience Pack” with LiveView, a sporty style armband for having your phone on your arm and the SportyPal™ Pro application from CreationPal.
So – how does it work?!
It’s basically like an Android desktop widget but in physical form and its controlled over Bluetooth from an application in your phone called LiveView™ Application. This application will be available for download from Android Market and after it’s installed other 3rd party application can through different APIs plug into that and make use of the LiveView™ device. In the LiveView™ Application on your phone you can also scan Android Market for LiveView™ enabled applications to find more cool stuff to download. More information for developers such as documentation, APIs etc will be made available at our Developer World web site.
These are the specs and default included features: (find the full press release here)
| Music player control | Play, pause, next, previous track and volume adjustment. Track title display |
| Social Networking Services | Display Facebook™ updates. Display Twitter™ updates |
| Messaging | Display incoming texts. Display RSS feeds |
| Calls | Show phone number for incoming calls. Mute ringer for incoming phone calls. List of missed calls. |
| Other | Calendar reminders. Find your phone. Display time and date. |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth™ technology. Micro USB connector. Bluetooth™ range approximately 10m |
| Screen | 1,3”colour OLED display, 128×128 pixels |
| Compatibility | Compatible with the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10, Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10 mini and Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10 mini pro and most other brands on Android 2.0 and above. For updated compability chart see www.sonyericsson.com/liveview |
| Facts 1)2) | Size:3.5 x 3.5×1.1cm. Typical consumer battery usage time: 4 days |
| Availability and versions | Available in selected markets from Q4 2010 |
| Colour |
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| Standard kit content |
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I’ve seen all your questions around the planned Android 2.1 update of the current XPERIA range. I really hear your eagerness and thirst for more information – and of course the update itself.
We have earlier given some information on what to expect from this update and said that the roll-out was planned to start late Q3.
The plan for the added features and Android 2.1 step-up still holds but unfortunately we need a couple of more weeks before we are ready to start the roll-out.
The revised plan is to start the roll-out from end of October and onwards.
We are of course not happy about the change of launch timing but we have had to spend some additional time on the software to really makes sure we roll-out with the right quality and user experience.
When it comes to what to expect from the updated software all three X10 models will be updated to Android 2.1 and the Xperia X10 will also get HD video recording with continuous auto focus among many other things.
The key changes for the different products are the following:
Xperia X10:
- HD video recording with continuous auto-focus for high quality videos
- Upgrade of the Android platform to Android 2.1
- New back up and restore application, with extended content back up
- 5 homescreens for apps, widgets, shortcuts and folders
- Social phonebook which automatically syncs contact pictures from Facebook and shows when your friends are online
Xperia X10 mini and X10 mini pro:
- Improved Bluetooth functionality with support for sending and receiving pictures, contacts and more
- New backup and restore application with extended content back up
- Automatic synchronization of your contact pictures between Facebook and your phone book
- Improved ways of handling pictures, audio, text and numbers in your messages
- Upgrade of the Android platform to Android platform 2.1
Over the coming weeks we will here on the product blog keep you updated with visual and video examples on what your phone will look like and be able to do after the update!
I’d also like to highlight that the update will be made available in a phased roll-out which means that different “kits” get the update at different times. It will take some additional weeks from end of October before all different kits have the new software available.
What we mean by a “kit” is a different configuration, i.e. colour of the phone, bundled accessories but most importantly in this case different software configurations.
The difference in software between different kits is mainly related to included languages, settings, applications etc – all this to comply with different legal and operator requirements.
A software upgrade roll-out is similar to a normal product launch, i.e. we roll out the products in a phased manner as the kits are completed. This is due to global and local type approvals and network testing and the same apply for a software upgrade.
From the end of October you will be able to follow availability of the new software on a market by market basis here on the blog.
I will keep you posted with more information and details as we go along.
The subjects on this blog are often technical but sometimes it can be quite refreshing that there’s more to mobile devices than just the techie stuff 
Just recently O2 in the UK launched an initiative to build awareness and improve on sustainability called Think big (not all pages are accessible outside the UK, sorry). One part of this initiative is something they call Eco rating which is very well described in this document for those who want to learn more. In this Eco rating they have ranked 65 mobile phones from 6 different manufacturers and I’m really glad to see the Sony Ericsson Elm at the very top with a rating of 4.3 out of 5! It’s of course also very nice to see that 4 out of the top 10 models are Sony Ericsson phones with X10 mini, X10 mini pro and Zylo getting the second highest rating of 4.0.
As you might know we at Sony Ericsson have a long history around sustainability and substance control for our portfolio and have since quite a while decided to offer some products under the GreenHeart brand.
This brand is used for those of our products that carry the torch in including the latest “features” when it comes to minimizing the negative impact on our environment.
Some of the things included under the Greenheart proposition so far are:
- High efficiency chargers with minimal standby loss.
- Minimized box sizes and packaging material
- Recycled plastics
- Waterborne paint
- E-manual to minimize the amount of paper in the box
- “Eco-inspiring” applications
- PC software in the phone instead of a CD
Our goal is that after introducing these features in the GreenHeart phones make them spread into other parts of our portfolio. A recent example is that all X10 mini and X10 mini pro sold in the world have the new GreenHeart charger included in the box. The plan is for this to continue so that the core of our next-year portfolio meets the GreenHeart requirements.
Read more about this at our GreenHeart blog dedicated to these subjects, thanks to Maria, Mats and Daniel in our Sustainability Team!
Feel free to ask any kind of questions you might have around sustainability – either here or at the dedicated GreenHeart blog - they really know a lot about these things and I’ve learnt a lot from them!
