By admin
29th October 2010.
14:10
Monthly Archives: October 2010
Today I can confirm that we will start the roll-out of the Android 2.1 based updates for Xperia X10, X10 mini and X10 mini pro now this coming Sunday. The roll out will start in the evening European time.
So far I have received confirmation that the generic kits for the Nordic countries will be the very first ones out on Sunday evening and then there will be more kits coming already during Monday and then the roll-out will continue throughout the month of November.
As said earlier these updates will give you some features introduced by Android 2.1 and the Xperia X10 will also get HD-video recording in 720p with continuous auto focus.
The changes in user experience after the update is a mix of things added or changed going from Android 1.6 to Android 2.1 and things changed or improved by us directly.
As a re-cap – 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
In most markets, your phone will automatically let you know with a notification when the update is ready for your specific software version and then you will be guided to how to perform the update using the PC Companion software. In that process, because of this being a big update, you will also be guided through some steps to be able to backup personal data before the update and then restore it when the update is finished. Find out more at www.sonyericsson.com/update
IMPORTANT: As I’ve pointed out previously here on the blog the software upgrade will be done in a phased roll-out which means that different “kits” gets the update at different times. This to secure quality in all networks and countries. So don’t get paranoid if your phone isn’t updated in the very first days – it will come!
What we mean by a “kit” is a different configuration, i.e. color 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 settings, applications, network configuration etc – all this to comply to different legal and network requirements. All of these different kits need separate approvals based on market and network, hence the phased roll-out.
I will try to keep track of which versions that get released continuously and will post updates when new markets or “kits” become available. Feel free to share your findings in the comments section here when you get the update for your phone!
As some of you have seen already I posted some videos earlier on what the experience is with the updated X10.
Of course I did my best in creating those earlier videos but there are people that are a lot more professional at such things than me. 
Therefore I’m now glad that the videos created for our user support site are coming together and this first one out shows the major benefits of the update in the Xperia X10. I know that for those of you that have followed my earlier videos this will be a bit of repetition but it really is done in a much more professional way so I wouldn’t want you to miss it!
(Note – It does have some wording on getting the update now – that is not yet really valid and it wasn’t scheduled to be released until the update is out there. Still I wanted to make the video available to you here as somewhat of a pre-release)
As most of you already know the main purpose of this blog is to get in touch with you out there. This of course to try to answer any questions you may have but also to gather your feedback on our products to be able to improve our products going forward. You really give great feedback and also in amounts big enough to make me have hard to keep up at all times.
As I said many times this is really appreciated and I assure you that your voices are important and fed back into our development and planning organizations.
The focus on this blog is around our products and what you think of them but now I would also like to take the opportunity to learn a bit on what you think about the blog itself.
As some may know we also have other blogs, The Sony Ericsson Developer Blog and the GreenHeart blog. Now there’s an initiative ongoing to create kind of a front window shared between the blogs. This work is ongoing and will most probably be used to improve the look and feel and design of the specific blogs as well, including this one.
Now when we’re evaluating different design ideas for such a “Blog Portal” I really think we should let you the readers have a say on which way the development should go.
Please if you have the time and interest feel free to take a short survey (around 10 min) with design proposals and interaction investigations to help us make the right choices.
If that sounds interesting – Click here to take the survey
Besides that I’m also curious to how you think the content of the blog should develop – I take care of most of the content here and really would like to hear what you want more or less of or if you have other ideas on how we should change going forward! Any ideas are welcome – just hit the comments section.
Even though this post isn’t really about our products you are of course still welcome to continue asking questions or engage in discussions around the products among the comments even on this post..
Finally – Have a great weekend all!
Some of the things you expressed wishes to learn more about are any improvements to Timescape, Social Phonebook etc.
Yesterday I recorded another video showing you a bit of what to expect.
What I show is basically a small but important update to Timescape, the experience from our implementation of the Social Phonebook and also the improved in-call user interface.
As usual this video is recorded with another updated X10 so it will also give you an idea on what to expect on HD quality and continuous auto focus. Unfortunately for this one I was out of the office so I was in a bit too dark environement to get a perfect video, therefore you’ll see the exposure metering and the auto focus struggling a bit more than usual but I still think think it does a good job.
NOTE – because of the blurring of contact details to my friends this one has been edited – however I hope that shouldn’t have a big impact on quality.
As usual, any follow-up questions – just let me know in the comments section!
Now I’ve shot some videos of the pre-release software update that I have in my XPERIA X10. This is not the final release but we are really close to releasing the final candidates into external and operator testing and approval now. When that testing is ready and the candidates gets approved the roll-out will start. The current plan still holds to start the roll-out towards the end of October and onwards. (As mentioned earlier the roll-out is done gradually though so it will take some time before all different versions get the update.)
In these videos I try to show you both what the updated home screen looks like and also some results from HD video recording with continuous auto focus.
Remember that even though we are close to a final candidate this still is pre-release software so there might still be small changes and optimizations made before commercial release.
First video out is a short clip showing the home screen that now has 5 panes and some other nice additions such as 5 rows of icons instead of 4. I also show some new widgets that come with the update.
I also made these two videos to show the HD video result. The first one shows a more real life use case where I move the phone from filming a far away object to a much closer one.
In this second video I instead kept the X10 on the tripod and introduce a close object into the scene. This is more of a stress test and it does struggle a little bit in the first attempt but is much quicker in the second one.
There have been more requests from you on what you want me to show and I am working on it. If you have more requests just let me know in the comments section!
