Maximys over at SEMC Blog has just reported that the upcoming PlayNow Arena services will be launched in two versions; one for your computer and one for your phone. I like the look of both versions, and I sincerely hope this will be used by consumers. This should also make it easier for new musicians to make a name for themselves.

Maximys also added that the services will soon be launched in Sweden and the United Kingdom, while the rest of us will have to wait a bit longer. I’m sure I’ll get round to do a review of the service once it launches, though.

Here’s an internal test view at the PlayNow Arena service for computers, also dubbed the Web service.

And here are a few screenshots of the handheld services for mobile phones, dubbed the WAP service.

Source: SEMC Blog

Sony Ericsson recently selected Swedish mobile games developer and publisher GlobalFun as one of its two official content acquisition partner for the upcoming PlayNow Arena and Fun & Downloads services.

As of now, there are no official statements from Sony Ericsson, but a few from GlobalFun.

- We have since the beginning of our business aimed to provide our customers, of which Sony Ericsson is a highly valued one, with high quality premium content. This appointment serves for us as a proof that our strategy on content acquisition and account management has been and still is the correct one, says Bertil Krumnack, EVP Sales & Business Development at GlobalFun.

Also commenting on the deal was GlobalFun CEO, Marcus Johansson.

The trust that Sony Ericsson is showing us by appointing us as one of two content acquisition partners is very flattering. We will do our very best to exceed the expectations in this area and to continue to grow our mutual business, says Marcus.

In my opinion, Sony Ericsson could easily have picked a better games developer than GlobalFun. Sure, their games are okay, but there are many other developers out there that publish better games. A 5-year contract has been signed to ensure close cooperations between the two companies.

On the 17th of June Sony Ericsson invited me for their Sound Snack event. Their goal was to tell us about their new study called Sound Snacking. In short, sound snacking means almost the same as the ordinary food snacking, listening to a piece of music to make you feel better. All of this will be explained later on.

The event
All invited press members were divided in groups with a maximum of four people. I was invited for the shift at ten o’clock, but I was late so I had to go with the next one. At the beginning we were taken to this really big room without any lights, the only thing I could see was a SE truck standing in the corner and the stairs between me and the truck. Continue reading “W350 presents Sound Snacking”

The Sony Ericsson F305 is Sony Ericsson’s first Motion Gaming-enabled phone. Or well, no, that’s actually not true, but it’s the first to go by that name in particular. It’s a quad-band GSM phone with support for EDGE network speeds.

This low/mid-level phone sports some rather cool gaming features. The three pre-loaded games - Bowling, Bass fishing & Jockey - will enable you to use movements to play the game. Say, you load up the bowling game - how do you play it? Simply imitate the movement of the bowling ball throw with the F305, and you’ll be playing the game. Simple, isn’t it? It’s a bit like the concept behind Nintendo Wii, although I find it hard to believe this will work just as great as the Wii does. Other than the special gaming features, the F305 offers a set of PlayStation-like gaming keys just above the display, as well as a shortcut key to your games. If you’re in the middle of a game, but the battery is running low (meaning you’ve played almost 8 hours!), you can quickly plug in the battery Power Pack CCP-100 (extra accessory), and you can play for hours again. That’s actually a rather clever accessory, and I hope it’ll be available for other phones, although there’s a chance that won’t happen.

F305 features loud stereo speakers on the back of it, making your gaming experience even better. If you feel like challenging a friend of yours in a match, you can do this via Bluetooth on some games.

F305 has got a decent music player capable of playing the most standard audio compression codecs, including the über-compressed eAAC+ codec. The phone memory is a bit limited though at only 10 megabytes, so you’ll have to expand the memory with a Memory Stick Micro card. Your music can then be transfered via a USB connection. You can stream your music wireless in stereo, as the phone features the Bluetooth A2DP profile. You can also have a listen to the radio with the built-in FM radio, and recognize the music playing with TrackID.

The display on the front of this Polar White or Mystic Black phone is a 2-inch large TFT display with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels, and up to 262.144 colours. While the resolution isn’t exactly excellent, it’ll make the rendering of 3D games quicker, and more games are available for phones of this screen resolution.

The F305 measures a good 96 x 47 x 14.6 millimetres, and weighs in at just 97.5 grams, making it a bit heavier than it actually looks. F305 will be out in selected markets in Q3 this year. We expect the price tag to be relatively low, considering this is a low/mid-end phone.

The F305 will be officially announced on Tuesday 17th.

Sony Ericsson has just launched a mini-site with a set of wallpapers of the lovely Maria Sharapova and the stylish Z555. The computer wallpapers can be downloaded here in the following sizes; 1024 x 768 pixels, 1280 x 1024 pixels, and 1920 x 1200 pixels (hallelujah!). At the same site, you can also download a set of wallpapers for your Z555 phone (or any other phone with a 176 x 220 pixels display).

Via: SEMCBlog

I usually don’t rant much about Nokia phones here at USEB, but for long there has been a rather interesting application for these called LightSabre, which turned phones with a built-in accelerometer into a deadly light saber with both sound and visual effects.

Now, the fantastic Steve Oldmeadow has created an application for Sony Ericsson phones with a built-in accelerometer running the A200 platform - it’s called Saber ME, and works brilliantly! Check his video demo of the application below.

The application will run on C902, K850, W760, W910 & W980 (and any future SE phone with an accelerometer and running A200 software platform). And best of all - it’s freeware! I am VERY interested in seeing what applications will come from Steve in the future

Download it here!

From this day forward, you will be able to check out cool high quality photo galleries of new and older Sony Ericsson phones right here at USEB. We’ve just finished setting up a gallery page, and are slowly starting to upload photos. At the moment you can find photo galleries of the K850, P1, P990, W910 & W960. Furthermore, we’ve added a sidebar widget to display four random gallery photos.

What’s more is that galleries can now be added directly into posts! This can come in handy in the future - and it looks something like this

We hope you will like this new feature as much as we do!