By Rikard Skogberg
31st May 2011.
11:12
Monthly Archives: May 2011
We couldn’t be more excited to bring you the news we have for you today. After much hard-work, we are happy to announce that the Android 2.1 upgrade will be available for AT&T XperiaTM X10 customers in the US starting Tuesday, May 31st. We can’t thank you enough for your patience.
Here’s to the ability to download more apps and gain better functionality to enrich your Sony Ericsson XperiaTM X10 experience.
If you’d like to learn more about how to upgrade your phone, please feel free to visit the following link: www.sonyericsson.com/attupdate
Time flies and it’s soon time for E3 in Los Angeles. E3 (www.e3expo.com) is one of the world’s biggest game fairs with lots of anticipation for announcements and news from the entire gaming industry.
We will be present with our own stand (South Hall, Stand No. 713) and there will be lots of news around upcoming new games optimized for XperiaTM PLAY.
I will not go there in person but my colleagues Marcus and Kalle from our developer world will be there and have promised to bring me material to keep you all up to speed here on the blog.
As inspiration for this I decided to go visit one of the developers we’re working with. They have a really cool upcoming game for XperiaTM PLAY, more details on that will be shared shortly.
Spending Friday afternoon in their office was a really nice experience – they are quite the tight and small team that you expect from a truly creative award-winning game dev studio. Their office is creatively designed to fit their lead game and gives a really relaxed and cool touch to their work environment. Fridays are also known as Gaming Fridays at their office so much of the discussion took place while playing FIFA on their big TV 
E3 starts on the 7th of June and I hope to be able to keep up with all the new stuff happening as it starts.
Here are some pics I shot in their office, all shot with XperiaTM arc.
They have won lots of awards
Their lead Android developer doing his magic (Empty chairs due to Gaming Friday)
Rest of the gang
Gaming Friday in the gaming room!
We have now started the roll-out of the first software update for Xperia™ arc and Xperia™ PLAY. So far it’s released for just a few different markets and “kits” but we plan the wider roll-out to start end of this week or in the beginning of next week.
The main feature addition in this update is Facebook inside Xperia that was presented recently when we announced the new mini products in London.
It allows you to share, like and connect on Facebook in a faster and easier way that hasn’t been possible before. The Facebook inside Xperia features works perfectly side-by-side with TimeScape and the Facebook for Android app. In the video above my colleagues Michelle and Marcus explain the benefits and major use-cases of this nice new integration.
Besides that this update also updates the Android platform to Gingerbread 2.3.3 and brings fixes and improvements based on the feedback we’ve received from you consumers out there. Your feedback on issues or problems is very important for us and I always forward everything I get from you here to our developers.
This update brings lots of fixes and optimizations within many different areas but here are some important ones where I know our developers have included many improvements and fixes:
- Battery performance
- General software stability
- Wi-Fi stability
- HD Video recording performance (Xperia™ arc)
- Touch responsiveness
This update will be possible to perform over the air directly from your phone or through PC-Companion.
The roll-out will start now but, as some of you know from earlier updates, I’d like to point out that it is a gradual roll-out over markets, mostly because of different approvals needed for different markets and customized kits. Therefore, depending on where you live and what customized “kit” you own it can take a while before you get it. In general unbranded “trade-kits” will be early.
I’ve seen lots of questions around the previously announced upcoming Gingerbread update for the Xperia™ X10. The work is progressing well and I hope to have final confirmation on what features etc it will contain within short and then do a blog post about it covering your most frequently asked questions. One thing I can confirm already now is that Facebook inside Xperia currently is planned to come to the Xperia™ X10 too.
To learn more about Facebook inside Xperia, our new Facebook Mobile integration, click on the products and services tab on www.sonyericsson.com
We just announced a cool thing on our global Sony Ericsson Facebook page.
There you can enter a competition to be one of the first reviewing one of our two upcoming feature phones before they’re even fully announced. 12 finalists will be chosen from the applicants and will be sent a phone to create a video review. 4 of those reviews will then be posted on our Facebook page and the one that gets the most likes will win a great prize. The selection of the 12 finalists will be made by a jury which I’m honored to be part of.
I’m sure many of you here would be a perfect fit for creating these reviews so I hope some of you sign up for it.
Interested? – Head on over to Sony Ericsson on Facebook and sign up!
We have some great news for our folks out in the US. All systems are go for the roll out of the first PlayStation® Certified smartphone, Xperia™ PLAY on Verizon Wireless. While we’ve successfully launched Xperia™ PLAY in other countries, our US customers have been readying themselves to make the jump to the Xperia™ family in a whole new way. The device will be available in-store May 26th, but you can look to get a head start with the pre-sale starting May 19th at www.verizonwireless.com. So, for our soon to be Xperia™ PLAY owners, we look forward to seeing you out on the playing field. Here’s the rundown:
Pricing and Availability
- The Sony Ericsson Xperia™ PLAY will be available in the US for pre-sale online at www.verizonwireless.com beginning May 19, and in stores on May 26 for $199.99 with a new two-year customer agreement.
- Sony Ericsson Xperia™ Play customers will need to subscribe to a Verizon Wireless Nationwide Talk plan and a smartphone data package. Nationwide Talk plans begin at $39.99 for monthly access and an unlimited smartphone data plan is $29.99 for monthly access.
Features:
Powered by Android 2.3, Gingerbread, the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ PLAY will come pre-loaded in the US with seven game titles including, Madden NFL 11 (EA Sports), Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior (Digital Legends), Asphalt 6: Adrenaline (Gameloft), The Sims 3 (EA), Star Battalion (Gameloft), Crash Bandicoot (Sony PlayStation) and Tetris. Customers can expand their video game library with more than 50 game titles available at launch for download via V CAST Apps. Customers easily become gamers with the slide out game pad revealing a directional keypad, dual analog touch joystick, two shoulder buttons and the four iconic PlayStation® symbol keys: circle, X, square and triangle.
Additional Features:
- 1 GHz Qualcomm® Snapdragon® processor with Adreno 205 GPU
- Adobe Flash Player
- 4-inch multi-touch display
- 5 Megapixel rear facing camera
- VGA front facing camera for still shots and video chatting
- Support for Google Mobile Services including Gmail™, YouTube™, Google Talk, Google Search, Google Maps and access to more than 200,000 apps available to download from Android Market™
- Mobile Hotspot capable- share 3G connection with up to five WiFi-enabled devices
