Archive for October, 2007

Interesting article about changes in A200

Monday, October 15th, 2007

Eldar Murtazin from Mobile-Review has written an article about the changes in the new A200 operating platform in Sony Ericsson phones such as K850 and W910. Here he compares the old A100 with the new one, and shows lots of examples of the new stuff. It’s only available in Russian, so I used Google Translate to translate it. You can find it here! Hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did!

Update! It’s now available in English, too! Check it out here :-)

Sony Ericsson sells half of UIQ to Motorola

Monday, October 15th, 2007

Well, I guess this was all the press conference later today was about. A bit sad, I think. They’ve almost just bought it, and then decides to sell half of it. After thinking about it, I still think that it’s sad, but I do see why they’ve decided to do so. This way they won’t be alone with developing UIQ and they can also give more money into developing. I’m sure this will make the Americans (since Motorola is American) know more about UIQ and this way, they’ll also be possible buyers of Sony Ericsson smartphones running UIQ. Smooth…

Just flashed my K800 to a K810!

Monday, October 15th, 2007

Yeah, I know that it isn’t news that you can flash your K800 into a K810. However, I just wanted to share a few thoughts on the process. Everything went quite easily and fast. It took about 15 – 20 minutes in total, which I think is quite acceptable. You get everything from the K810 (software wise) and with a simple “custom pack”, you can also keep the K800’s keypad light settings, which is a problem without on a K800 flashed into a K810.

I had – of course – modded my K800 before flashing, and now all these modifications are gone. It really doesn’t matter that much, as it takes a few seconds to apply them again.

If anybody feels like flashing their K800, but are a bit afraid of what will happen, then my advice to you is to read the instructions carefully and have everything ready (firmware and custom pack) before beginning. It’s really not hard to do, and I’d recommend everyone to do it! I’ll upload some pictures of my new “K810″ and add them to this post later (added now!). Will also do a post about PhotoFix – what are the real differences?

k800_flash_k810.jpg

M610i – exclusive new info and pictures!

Monday, October 15th, 2007

m610_1.jpgThere have been a lot of rumors about the Sony Ericsson smartphone by the codename “Lizy”. Now, I can with tell you, that it’s going to be called M610i for sure. It’s a triband GSM phone (900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz) with UMTS (2100 MHz). It’s got WLAN, too, as well as Bluetooth 2.0 and a FM radio with TrackID support.
The phone will come bundled with a charger, stereo headset, battery, USB cable, extra stylus, documentation package and the usual Sony Ericsson software CD. It will support M2 memory cards.

If anybody’s interested in the user manual, then it can be downloaded as an exclusive from The Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog right here. Read on for 8 (high resolution) pictures of the phone.

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Cool W910 video

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Here’s a cool W910 video, demoing some of the media related features of W910!

YouTube Preview Image

K850 coming next week!

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Ah, I love the K850! And I’m of course also getting it. However, I want the green edition, but it’s not available in Denmark. So what was I to do, other than have a chat with my boss and ask Sony Ericsson to send me a green one. Hopefully it’s possible, because I really want it in that color! Nevertheless, I should be getting K850 next week – either from Sony Ericsson or some online shop. I’m pretty excited to finally get Sony Ericsson’s camera phone flagship of the year, and don’t worry – I’ll make a large review of it and snap lots of pictures!

Open letter to SE’s new CEO

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

The open letter to Sony Ericsson’s soon-to-be CEO, Mr. Hideki (Dick) Komiyama, about the future of UIQ (3) and the P990’s faulty past, is a letter I took part of signing yesterday. I think it’s very important that Sony Ericsson realizes that consumers don’t want to be beta-testers, but want a product, that’s usable once it’s released. A thing the P990 wasn’t. In fact P990 had some many bugs, that a lot of users sold their phone before the first firmware update was out.

The firmware updates didn’t change much, and the last of these, is still buggy. If you experienced this, or just don’t want it to happen, then speak up, and sign this open letter at the My-Symbian forum thread, where more than 100 people so far have signed it. Of course, you’ll be required to sign up at the forum and won’t be able to post anything in the first 24 hours due to security reasons, but please don’t forget about it! Simply use this thread, and sign it now! On the left & right are the current Sony Ericsson UIQ 3 phones, and more of these will come this Monday – that’s how many phones this is regarding!

The open letter can be found here, if you missed the link above.

UIQ press conference

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

Sony Ericsson has invited the press to a press conference about UIQ on this Monday. According to The Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog’s sources, this will be an announcement with a mixture of phones. A rather nice one, actually. So look forward to this! (been misinformed, sorry). Here’s the detailed description from Sony Ericsson press site.

Who: Miles Flint, President, Sony Ericsson and Johan Sandberg, CEO, UIQ
What: UIQ Press Conference
When: Monday 15th October – 1:30pm – 2:40pm (Lunch served)
Where: The Law Society, 113 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1PL

Miles Flint, President of Sony Ericsson and Johan Sandberg, CEO of UIQ will host an international press conference announcing a strategic business update for UIQ.

Following Sony Ericsson’s acquisition of the Swedish software company from Symbian Ltd on 2nd February, there has been significant progress with regards to UIQ technology, handsets and licensing. Monday’s announcement will further enhance the strength of UIQ as highly competitive and independent cross-vendor user interface platform for business and multimedia feature phones.

Q3 results for Sony Ericsson

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

W200 is a cheap phone from Sony Ericsson The number of sold phones from July to September grew with 31 percent compared to the 19.8 million sold phones last year, and the 25.9 million sold phones this year. This is mainly because the cheaper models have been selling really good.

The competition is still hard, though, and to gain a greater market share Sony Ericsson has had to aim for the fast growing markets – countries like India and Latin America. Here, however, the income is lower, which makes the average phone price a bit lower, too.
In Q3 last year the average price for a Sony Ericsson phone was €147, while the average price this year is at €120. Sony Ericsson however thinks, that the results of Q3 last year was remarkably good, which makes it hard to compare.

The sales grew with 7 percent, from €2.91 billion last year to the €3.11 billions this year.

Even though more phones have been sold, the income fell. The operating income fell from last year’s €433 million to this year’s €393 million. Netto income fell by 10 percent.

Sony Ericsson’s market share is now above nine percent, the company thinks.

Here’s an overview

  Q3 2006 Q2 2007 Q3 2007
Number of units shipped (million) 19.8 24.9 25.9
Sales (Euro m.) 2,913 3,112 3,108
Gross Margin % 31.5% 29.6% 30.7%
Operating Income (Euro m.) 427 315 393
Operating Income % 14.6% 10.1% 12.7%
Income Before Taxes (Euro m.) 433 327 384
Net income (Euro m.) 298 220 267
Average Sales Price (Euro) 147 125 120

Sony Ericsson’s wireless “snowball”

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

With the announcement on the 11th Sony Ericsson announced two new accessories. The MDS-100, which has been mentioned quite a few times, and the HCB-105 handsfree car accessory. HCB-105 isn’t that exciting and is just another Bluetooth car handsfree speaker solution. What is exciting is the new speaker-system.

The sound quality is apparently very high, as Sony Ericsson states, it’s a “speaker that looks as good as it sounds”, and personally I think it looks great!

It’s using Bluetooth A2DP, which is supported by almost all new Sony Ericsson phones, and all you have to do is to connect it via the Bluetooth menu and after a few seconds, the music played on your phone will be coming out through the “ball”.

The battery should be capable of 50 hours of standby or 5 hours of listening on a single charge. Nice!

A small bag comes along with the speakers, so it’s protected when carrying it around. It weighs 225 grams, and really isn’t that big. It will end up costing around 80 – 100 USD (£40 – 50), and should be in shops in time for the Christmas sales.