Archive for April, 2008

K660 & Z770 Coming Soon

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Just wanted to pop a note that our review of the HSDPA-enabled Sony Ericsson K660 will soon be published (apologize that it’s taken quite some time, but my schedule is quite booked these days). It’ll probably end up around 2,500 words or so, meaning that it won’t be as in-depth going as the W890 review, but hopefully you’ll enjoy it and put it at good use anyway :-)

Also, I should be getting a Z770 from Sony Ericsson any day now (update: Monday or Tuesday). Or at least, I think so :-) While this is basically a clamshell version of the K660, I am still in doubt what to do with it. If I should simply do a long comparison of the two, or whether I should go for a full fledged review of it. Any ideas?

Have fun in the meantime :-)

PS. Thought I might want to shortly mention what’s happening on the rumours’ front of things. Well, Sony Ericsson is currently working up a Walkman version of the C902 with some extra tasty features. We might get to see this a lot earlier than expected… Wow, what a cliff-hanger! ;)

Go Backstage With Leona Lewis & Sony Ericsson

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Sony Ericsson today launched a new music competition, starring the beautiful and highly talented Leona Lewis. You might know Leona from hits as Bleeding Love (I love this one – and nice music video, too!) and Better in Time. You can actually download the latter completely free of charge at the competition website, thanks to Sony Ericsson.

The competition is quite simple. All you have to do is to write down why you’d like to win the competition in less than 25 words, fill out the form and you’re in! All entrants must be over the age of 18 and residents of Australia. Too bad for me.

The prizes are;

  • Double backstage pass (by responding to this YouTube video)
  • Tickets to an exclusive event with the singer
  • A Sony Ericsson W890 pre-loaded with the complete Spirit album

You’ll find the competition website over here.

Good luck!

GSMArena Previews The G502

Friday, April 25th, 2008

The lucky GSMArena team has had its hands on the recently announced G502, and has posted a nice preview of this black beauty. They like the user interface, the usability and its nice looks, but aren’t that impressed with its lack of advanced features. A full review will be posted in a few weeks, so in the meantime you can check out the preview here.

MPS-30 Portable Speakers

Friday, April 25th, 2008

I spotted the MPS-30 portable loud speakers over at Esato earlier today, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen them before. It’s a portable loud speaker you can use with your Fast Port-powered Sony Ericsson phone. The MPS-30 also doubles with a built-in radio antenna. It all works as long as you keep the accessory connected, so it can get power from the phone. It is said to deliver quite good sound, and it’ll be available in two colours; Black and Silver & White and Gold.

You can read more about MPS-30 right here.

New Version Of Themes Creator

Friday, April 25th, 2008

Sony Ericsson today published a new version of its Theme Creator application for creating themes for its features phones and Symbian based smart phones. The new version has hit v. 3.27, and will be adding support for the following phones:

  • C702
  • C902
  • G700
  • G900
  • R300
  • R306
  • T303
  • W350
  • W760
  • W980
  • Z555
  • Z770

There’s still no sign of support for the XPERIA X1, although Sony Ericsson has said it’ll support it in a near future. The newly announced G502 and Z780 are also missing, but I’m sure they’ll work with themes created for i.e. the C902 or W760 (A2 phones).

If you’re on Linux, get it here; Mac, get it here; Windows, get it here.

New Design At USEB

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Today, I’m announcing a new theme design here at USEB. This one is meant to be lighter and generally better looking than the other one. This one is supposed to auto-fit according to your screen resolution, but we’d still recommend using a resolution of at least 1024 pixels in width. Personally, I use 1280 pixels, and that looks smashing! I’ve also just noticed a few formatting bugs in Internet Explorer, but I haven’t found any in Firefox, so that’s yet another reason for using Firefox. Anyway, it shouldn’t have an impact on the content, which should still be readable, although the theme won’t look that great.

So, have a look around, and please report back to me on what you think of it and if you’ve found any serious bugs. Thanks :-)

Q1 Financial Results

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Sony Ericsson CEO Dick Komiyama today announced the company’s Q1 financial results in the live webcast earlier this morning (press release issued here).

I’m in a bit of a hurry here, so I’ll leave you with the highlights and the link, and hopefully I’ll get round at editing the post later tonight. In short, this quarter of the year wasn’t that good for Sony Ericsson, with a lower amount of sold phones than LG (22 million vs 24 million).

Q1 Highlights:

  • Year-on-year volume growth of 2%
  • Income before taxes at higher end of forecast
  • R&D investment continues to expand portfolio and addressable market
  • New sub-brand XPERIATM added to portfolio

G502 & Z780 Announced

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Sony Ericsson today announced the two generation web phones, G502 & Z780, as expected. We pretty much already revealed the G502 for Sony Ericsson yesterday, so you can check it out right here and with the first-ever live picture of it here.

The other phone to be announced was the Z780. A clamshell phone similar to the Z770, with similar specifications and design. It features a 2.2 inch TFT display of QVGA resolution, a 2 mega pixel camera with fixed focus, a built-in GPS as well as tri-band HSDPA network support for enhanced Internet browsing speeds. Full press release here.

Exclusive: G502 ‘Emelie’ Live Picture

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Here’s the full live picture of the Brilliant Hazel coloured G502, also known as Emelie.

Revealing Sony Ericsson G502

Monday, April 21st, 2008

Sony Ericsson will be announcing the G502, previously known by the codename Emelie, on Wednesday 23rd April – well, that doesn’t keep us from revealing it already! G502 is a fancy-looking candy bar phone in the style of K530, but with a clean black design, that feels a bit inspired by the land of Japan.

The front of this black jewel plays host to a 2 inch large TFT display of QVGA resolution, capable of showing upto 262.144 colours.

The G502 is a HSDPA-enabled phone targeted at the business & youth segment with support Exchange Activesync and built-in Google Maps for Mobile. The phone is supposedly ready for Web 2.0 with the built-in Access NetFront web browser, and it shall be easy to set up e-mail accounts on it by using the e-mail wizard. RSS feeds can be displayed on the standby screen, as on other A2-based feature phones.

It will feature a 2 mega pixel fixed focus camera on the back with 4x digital zoom and video recording possibilites. Apart from that, G502 features Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR as well as USB 2.0 support.

Its dimensions will be 109 x 46 x 13.5 millimetres, and it’ll weigh in at 83.5 grams. It has 32 MB internal memory, and it can be expanded by Memory Stick Micro cards.

G502, which is a tri-band GSM phone with EDGE support, will hit selected markets in Q2 this year, and will be available in two colour trimmings; Brilliant Hazel & Champagne Black.

We’ve got a question for you, Sony Ericsson. Why not make a change, and put UIQ on this phone instead of the A2 software platform?

Other than that, well, I guess you saw this first on USEB :-)

PS. Pressing the thumbnail, will give you a larger view!