This is basically my first evening in the new flat in Stockholm, and guess what I find when I check my email? Xperia has been officially announced!

Finally Sony Ericsson has seriously entered the smartphone business. We’ve earlier written about Xperia in "Is ‘Xperia’ Sony Ericssons rumored P5i or is it a webservice?", now it seems we were both right and wrong. It’s a smartphone, it’s a product line, but it sure is not the P5i nor a webservice. Instead the Xperia X1 marks a new episode in Sony Ericsson history with a product line developed for web communication and multimedia entertainment.

Sure the P990, W950, W960 and the P1 were all decent devices classified as smartphones, but seriously if you ever used them you’d know there were moments you just wanted to smack them hard against a wall. The P990 and P1i were essentially business phones and filled their purpose somewhat satisfying. The W950 and W960 still are top of the line music devices, but nothing I personally would use. A modern consumer wants both of these world, business and entertainment in one device and hopefully thats exactly what the X1 will do.

This baby has one flaw, it’s not running Symbian under the hood, instead Sony Ericsson has decided to spread it’s risks with operating systems (like most manufacturers these days) selecting the Windows Mobile platform for the Xperia line. Yes it’s a shame, I feel you all.

Enough blabbering, here are the goodies! The Xperia X1 features some really cool stuff such as a 3 inch 800×480 pixels 65 536 color touchscreen (ching ching!) perfect for watching movies during those long hours at trains or flights, HSDPA and HSUPA (fast downloads AND uploads), a full QWERTY keyboard, optical joystick and a 4-way key. There’s also an aGPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera able to record (and playback) VGA (640×480px) videos at 30 fps. All this in a neat arc-slider package measuring 110 x 17 x 53 mm and 145 grams. Did I mention it comes in two colors? Black for sinners and silver for saints. And oh yes, it will be available sometime during the second half of 2008.

Full pressrelease and more images after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Android, Google’s linux based software platform for mobile devices may not be directly Symbian related, but I still feel it’s important for us to at least follow the birth of this new platform as it surely will have some impact on the business. Also, the Android platform might introduce several new ideas which we all can use, just like the iPhone.

I’ve previously reported on Android, formerly rumored to be ‘the Google phone’ in several posts such as the "Google phone" is official, introducing Android, First peeks at Google’s new Android platform and The dawn of Smartcomputers, S60 Touch vs. OS X vs. Android vs. UIQ vs. Windows Mobile.

Now Mobile-review.com has written a review on the Android platform using the emulator found in the SDK (Software Development Kit) available for developers or anyone interested in developing solutions for the Android platform. Besides from the image above showing off a quite ugly concept phone, the review does not reveal much about the coming platform. It can however be interesting to see a glimpse of things to come.

Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz discuss the availability of the SDK, that it will be open source in the future, and demo applications on the Android platform.

I’ve found some more information on Google’s Android. Previously I reported on the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) but now we’re starting to get some real life examples on what this platform can do. Much of the focus seems to be open source development by the community, Google wants us - the users - to develop the software and functionality we want and make it available for everyone. They’ve even put aside $10 000 000 which they’re giving away to the best ideas. This is of course a smart move, allowing their platform to grow both in functionality as well as becoming popular in the developer community - and hopefully with consumers in the end.

Bruce Leak and Timo Bruck from SkyPop demo a couple of their new applications for Android.

Some of you Symbian fans might get alarmed by these news. Well, don’t be. Read the rest of this entry »

Accelerometers are hot these days. They make our smartphones even smarter by being able to tell how the user is moving and tilting the device, much like Nintendo’s Wii remote. I’m impressed about the fact that Sony Ericsson picked up on this trend so fast and incorporated a accelerometer in their non-Symbian device K850. It’s slow though…very slow! Watch the video below and judge yourself.

Read more for the video. Read the rest of this entry »

Youtube is so full of it and we all love it This clip is so bad it’s good. I present the climax of a low-budget Turkish version of Rambo, complete with awful editing, ripped off score, and a RPG that ‘falls’ out when it’s fired at the enemy.