By admin
21st December 2010.
13:07

Update on LiveView™

The Sony Ericsson LiveView™ micro display has now been available for a while and we see more and more 3rd party developers starting to add support for it in their applications. The idea with the LiveView™ really is to leverage on 3rd party innovation so I’m glad to see that there already are quite a few developers creating plug-ins for it.

The currently available plug-ins span from using it as a notifier to more creative ideas like using it to pretend you’ve got a phone call.

These are the plug-ins that I found on Android Market as of now with short explanations.

• Moon Phase Pro: 3D interactive simulation of the moon.
• LiveView™ HTC Music plug-in: Music plug-in for HTC phones.
• OI Shopping List: Shop easily with your LiveView™.
• FakeCall for LiveView™: Trigger sounds and vibration on your Android phone.
• LiveView™ ContactCall plug-in: Lets you browse contacts and initiate a call.
• LiveView™ for Cycle Hire: Quickly access and safely access docking station statuses for London’s TfL Barclays Cycle Hire scheme.
• LiveView™ Weather plug-in: Show current weather forecast in your location.
• SportyPal: Motivational training tool that gives you a view of your work-out.
• Launcher plug-in: Display your application icons on the LiveView™.
• Smart Training: GPS tracker tool, post your training record.
• Where am I LiveView™ plug-in: Shows a map of your current location.
• LiveView™ PowerAMP: Control any music player.
• Gmail for LiveView™: Gmail notifications plug-in that also lets you read the first part of the e-mail.
• Se-first.com news alert: RSS notifier for Se-first.com
• Calendar plug-in: Gives you an overview of your calendar and you can scroll and dive into a daily agenda.
• Twitter icon plug-in: Shows your Twitter icon or a QR-code so that you can spread your Twitter-url.
• Mode plug-in: Profile manager that lets you switch between silent, vibrate etc.
• Psps Ikina: To be honest I’m not really sure what this does, I guess I’m outside the target group If you know please enlighten me!

I’ve tried most of them and I must say that I think we’re only seeing the beginning of which type of creative ways this device can be used.
It will sure be exciting to see what will be developed going forward. Let me know if you find anything I’ve missed!

As I’ve read some reviews of LiveView™ I’ve noticed that some users are reporting issues with e.g. the connection between the device and the phone. Especially when using phones from our competitors. This is very unfortunate and has been escalated to our developers. They have been working hard on identifying the issues and have solutions coming.
In some reviews I have also read comments about the LiveView™ device not being upgradable. I just want to confirm that that is not the case. There will be a software update coming for the device itself. The work is ongoing and the plan is to make this updated software available as an update through SE Update Service in January. Some minor things are also possible to solve within the LiveView™ Application in the phone and updates of that app will be issued on Android Market as for any app. I will keep you posted when I get details on when it’s available!