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Sony Mobile announced new partnerships with leading accessory brands like CaseMate, AGF, Incipio, Krusell, Dicota, Copter,Muvit, Roxfit, Orbyx and Shinnorie to provide quality cases and shells for their smartphones. The aforementioned companies are expected to announce exciting and stylish products for Xperia smartphones from mid-May.
Source : Sony Xperia Blog Portal
The basic purpose of a mobile phone is hassle less signal reception and it seems Sony Xperia P struggles. Xperia P suffers reception issue, as reported by Cnet Asia. When the handset is gripped in a certain way, the signal bar drops and it restricts data from being sent or received, but voice calls are not affected though.
Cnet says there is no problem outdoors where the signal is strong enough but the case is different when the signal is weak, that is when it’s indoors. They have added a video demonstrating the issue and its clear from the video that the issue is serious. They have already reported it to Sony.
UPDATE [16 May]
Another video pops up but this time there are NO issues whatsoever. So we can assume that not all the units but only a minority are affected. I think Cnet tested one of the faulty devices.
Source : Cnet Asia
The two brothers in the the Xperia NXT series along with Xperia sola will be available in Malaysia in the coming weeks. Along with the launch dates, Sony Mobile Malaysia has disclosed the pricing as well.
To be exact, Xperia U will be available in the market from 15 May for RM899 (€226). A car charger is also included in the package as a limited period offer. The phone will be available in black with either a pink or white cap and in white with a pink cap.
The company is releasing Xperia sola also on the same date as Xperia U, that is 15 May with a price tag of RM999 (€252). The package includes two SmartTags and a car charger.
Xperia P is scheduled for release on 23 May and will cost RM1,499 (€378). The recently announced Smart Headset is included in the package along with a car charger and two SmartTags (limited period offer).
Source : Soyacincau Via Xperiablog
A picture of another android powered smartphone from Sony surfaced today. The phone bears the code name ST26i. We have no details on the specs of this phone at this moment but from the picture leaked it is clear that Sony has made its mind to abandon the liquid energy logo which was the unique identity of Sony/Sony Ericsson phones. We hope the phone would release on ICS.
Source : GSMArena
Xperia U is the most awaited smart phone in India for it has a 1 GHz dual core processor and is expected to get a reasonable price tag in the country. The transparent band on the Xperia U that can illuminate itself according to the prominent colors on the display is capable of grabbing some attention. Also the phone packs a 5MP rear camera (no Exmor R sensor), a beautiful 3.5 inch display and 512 MB of RAM.
The Times of India reports that the phone is all set to release in India and will hit the stores around the country in two weeks. The phone is already available for pre order on letsbuy and flipkart for Rs. 17,399. Xperia U would sell like hot cakes since the price seems reasonable.
Also it is interesting that there is no information about Xperia P which was announced along with Xperia U.
Source : The Times of India
Sony Mobile Communications today announced two new LTE smart phones exclusively for the Japanese market. The phones are named Xperia GX and Xperia SX.
Xperia GX
Xperia GX has a 4.6” HD resolution screen, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 13MP camera with Sony Exmor R which will record videos on HD, 16GB of internal flash storage and will be released on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The phone copies the design language of Xperia arc and will be available in black and white variants.
Xperia SX
Xperia SX is the world’s lightest LTE smartphone weighing only 95 grams. The phone has a 3.7” Reality Display with Mobile BRAVIA Engine, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 8MP camera with Sony Exmor R capable of HD video recording, 8GB internal flash storage, Japanese specific features such as infrared port data exchange, mobile wallet and mobile TV. Xperia SX will also be released on Ice Cream Sandwich and you can select either a black or white variant.
Sony Introduces more Media Applications on Xperia GX and Xperia SX
The LTE enabled smart phones will give you download speeds up to 75mbps. The phones are expected to be available in the summer.
Source : Sony Mobile Press release
Announced in January, Xperia ion was initially an LTE smart phone for the US market. After a month of its announcement, news emerged that the phone is to be available to the rest of the world as well. Anyway, there has not been an official statement from Sony regarding the release dates of Xperia ion till date.
Now we have a vague idea about the release date of the LTE smart phone from Sony. A Google ad says that the phone is all set for its release in the United States this June. The phone will be carrier bound to AT&T. The ad says, “Coming Exclusively to AT&T in June”.
Source: Xperiablog
It has been 3 months since the Xperia P announcement in MWC 2012 and it’s time to watch the sample videos recorded with the smart phone. If you are not aware of it already, Xperia P has an 8MP camera with Exmor R sensor and it is capable of recording videos at 1080p. Here we have two videos ; one recorded at 1080 p and the other at 720 p. The videos look good and the Sony 8MP shooter once again proves that it is one of the best available on a phone.
Sony Xperia P 1080p sample
Sony Xperia P 720p sample
Note* Make sure to adjust the resolution to the appropriate one before viewing the videos.
Source : Youtube
Xperia U and Xperia Sola went on sale in Honkong and Taiwan. Xperia P will join the party a little late by middle of May. Xperia U is priced HK$2,498 (€246) in Hong Kong and NT$9,900 (€259) in Taiwan. Xperia Sola gets a price tag of HK$2,998 (€295) in Hong Kong and NT$10,900 (€285) in Taiwan. The black variant of Xperia Sola is for sale and the red version is expected to arrive a little late.
Interestingly, the mid range smart phone in the Xperia NXT lineup; Xperia P is delayed but it will be available by the middle of May. The expected price in Taiwan is NT$13,800 (€360). Xperia P and Xperia U will show up in Europe by the middle of May and towards the end of May in the UK.
Next smart phones to be released from Sony are powered by the NovaThor U8500 platform from ST-Ericsson. Sony decided to shift from Snapdragon to ST-Ericsson chipsets for they are well known for its performance and power efficiency. Sony’s 2011 port folio of smart phones packed Snapdragon chips and they were well known for the performance it delivered. Still, the battery performance suffered even though there was a 1500mah battery to power the devices. This might be the reason that prompted the company to try the ST-Ericsson chipsets on their 2012 port folio. ST-Ericsson chipsets are well known for their performance and the power efficient design.
The NovaThor U8500 is the first integrated smart phone platform to support Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) dual core technology in a high-performance, low-power and cost-optimized solution. Also, it is the first smart phone platform to support Full HD 1080p progressive-scan camcorder capabilities. The chipset also delivers high performance 2D and 3D graphics.
NovaThor™ U8500 block diagram
The NovaThor U8500 consists of the DB8500 dual core ARM Cortex-A9 SoC (system on chip) with ARM Mali 400MP graphics and NEON®CPU extensions, a built-in HSPA+/4G 14Mbps modem, peripheral chips that handle audio, USB, power and SIM card functions. It has a dual multimedia DSP for low-power, flexible media processing.
Symmetric multi-processing (SMP)
The SMP enabled dual core processor offers a high-end 3D graphics accelerator to enable high mobile computing and graphics performance. An SMP enabled architecture manages the different processes to be split among several processors giving priority to performance and power requirements. Xperia P, Xperia U and Xperia sola uses the same technique used for PCs and high-performance computing; ie, the aforementioned smart phones when running apps simultaneously can spread the applications across different processors, while individual computer-intensive applications can also make use of multi-processing by means of software multi-threading.
Even though the processing is complex, the SMP powered chips are power efficient. When a single processor runs at full capacity to complete a task, multi-processors work half as hard enabling the entire chip to run at a lower temperature and thereby saving the power and allows the user to do much more on a single battery charge.
Advantages of ARM Cortex-A9 processor
NovaThor U8500 packs the Cortex A9 processor. The Cortex A9 processor is well known for its maximum performance using minimum power and it has attracted a lot of manufactures to adopt it on their smart phones. Apple opted the Cortex A9 processor to do the computing on their iphone 4s.
Smart phones are prone to thermal conditions where there is a probability that the chipset blows off but the MPcore technology on the Cortex A9 processor supports the chip to work efficiently within the thermal constraints. The processor also has the ability to share software and tool investments across multiple devices. Cortex A9 employs a hard macro implementation that delivers a peak performance of 4000 DMIPs while consuming less than 250mW per CPU. The Cortex A9 Media Processing Engine (MPE) can be used with either of the Cortex-A9 processors and provides an engine that offers both the performance and functionality of the Cortex-A9 Floating-Point Unit (FPU) and implements the NEON Advanced SIMD instruction set for further acceleration of media and signal processing functions.
Mali-400MP dedicated to Graphics
Mali-400MP is the world’s first OpenGL ES 2.0 conformant multi-core GPU that provides 2D and 3D acceleration with performance scalable up to 1080p resolutions, while maintaining power efficiency.
General Architectural features of ARM MALI GPU:
Xperia P, Xperia U and Xperia sola are the power efficient and maximum performance oriented smart phones from Sony since they pack the NovaThor U8500 chipset from ST-Ericsson. These smart phone have the unique advantage of the above mentioned technology from ARM and hence we hope that the smart phones will keep up to the promises of the company. The power efficiency of ARM processors might be the reason why Sony decided to give these phones a power source of only 1300mah (the first dual core from Sony had a 1700mah battery under the hood). Moreover they can make it cost efficient too.
Source : Developer World ARM ST-Ericsson
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