Our friend Eldar over at Mobile-Review has managed to get his hands on a Kurara, the much leaked HD video recording handset that we’ve being seeing so much of lately. Eldar revealed that Kurara is packing a Cortex A8 processor and 256 MB of RAM as well as a PowerVR graphics processor. All this corroborates the 720p HD video recording we’ve heard about and the Symbian UI is supposedly most responsive and fluid indeed. Eldar went on to say that in terms of price we’d be looking at around 500 euros and could expect to see it sometime in February.

Keep your eyes on Mobile-Review tomorrow as Eldar is promising a more full-on preview and more pictures!

[via Engadget]

It looks like Satio is to be pulled from sale at the Carphone Warehouse in the UK. The reason for the pull is being cited as software issues, an all too familiar problem for Sony Ericsson handsets. Interestingly enough the silver version of the handset is still available for sale, just not the black version. There’s also no word on whether or not this recall will affect other retailers in the UK or in other countries. It’s an embarrassing move for Sony Ericsson given that they will want to put the past year or two’s seemingly endless parade of bug prone handsets behind them, only to have their current flagship handset yanked from sale.

Sick of seeing pictures of the X10 yet? No neither are we! Here’s yet another gallery of Sony Ericsson’s forthcoming flagship.

 

[via Daily Mobile]

It would come as no surprise to most of you if Sony Ericsson was to delay the launch of a high end handset, in fact it’s actually come to be expected! Well that expectation just increased for the Xperia X10!

We recently reported that the Official SE E-Store was showing a specific release date of Feb 10th but no sooner than people could pour scepticism on the date, it’s been removed. The very same E-Store now shows “TO BE ANNOUNCED”.

This may be just a precaution from SE or, more ominously, a sign that the X10 has already been delayed from the February Launch!

Mik

Here are two new spy pics of the Sony Ericsson Kurara ( ‘U5′) , which was leaked a couple of weeks ago for the first time. The ‘Kurara’ will be launched under the Entertainment Unlimited banner and will be based on the Symbian S60 platform. It will sport an 8 megapixel camera capable of recording HD videos ( check out the words ‘HD’ imprinted on the back). Other features include a LED flash, face detection and smile shutter.

Contrary to rumors, the Kurara will feature a smaller 3.2 inch touchscreen although it’ll sport the same processor as on the Satio.

Other specs include a 1200 mAh battery, 3.5mm audio jack, Wi-Fi with DLNA, HSDPA and HSUPA support, a built-in GPS receiver and a microSD card slot. Sony Ericsson has also decided to give its proprietary connector a miss and its been replaced by a microUSB port, which is covered by a protective lid.

Via: GsmArena

Our good friend rog has posted a huge preview of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 over at se-first.com.

The preview offers videos of Timescape, Mediascape, e-mail client, browser, messaging and camera application in action as well as a plethora of live images!

Here’s a snippet of the article:

Let’s start with some facts and figures. The X10 sports (among a lot of others) the following main-features:
Android 1.6 (Donut)
WVGA screen (480 x 854)
Scratch resistant, 4 inches, capacitive TFT touchsreen
Size: 119 x 63 x 13 mm, 135 grams
1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor
Sony Ericsson Timescape™ & Mediascape™ User Interface2
HSPA
8 Megapixel camera with touchfocus, multipoint-focus, automatic scene detection, smile detection
WVGA video recording
Face recognition on pictures
aGPS
Exchange ActiveSync
3.5mm headset jack, miniUSB connector
1500mAh battery

……….

Let’s get into details a bit more, our first video gives you some impressions of the Xperia X10’s look, which hopefully gives you some better feeling of the Android device (for best quality, watch it in HD!):

……….

Next thing: let’s have a look at the newly introduced concept of Timescape™ and Mediascape™, which basically represents Sony Ericsson’s customization of the Android UI.

……….

What can we say about XPERIA X10 at the current stage? Well… It is definitely fun to use, the huge screen displays every content in a brilliant way, the capacitive screen is responsive, and once the firmware gets into a more final state, the phone for sure will also be more fluent in the usage. A glimps on the power that is hidden under the hood is very noticable already now in the browser, which is ultra-fast.

Sony Ericsson’s approach of including a wide area of social networks and tearing down the borders between those services in such a forceful way is certainly something new in the mobile phone area. A little doubt remains though: will the average (and even the above-average) user really make complete use of all the features that the X10 offers?

The preview is excellent and the phone is looking great, probably the most responsive we’ve seen it performing so far. So head on over to se-first.com to read the full article as well as another two videos and of course loads of live photos.

Cheers rog!

Mik

Rikard Skogberg over at the Sony Ericsson Product Blog has posted several sample pictures and a video shot with the Xperia X10 camera. Of course the handset in use is still a prototype so there’s room for improvement yet but some of the shots are starting to look ok. Overall though I’d say there is a worrying amount of blur around the edges and the first picture is particularly bad, just look at the pink middle and blue tone all around it.

Take a look and see what you think:

The video looks ok though a little wobbly:

Mik

The launch date for the eagerly anticipated Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 has been confirmed to be February 10th 2010 by the Official SE E-Store.

As you can see above the “Coming Soon” page lists the X10 with a February release and this is narrowed further to the 10th once you go through the pre-registration process. So who’s going to start a countdown page then?

Mik

A nice promotional video from Sony Ericsson here and it shows off the handset a lot more than some other recent promos we’ve seen. The X10 looks rather large to me in this video to be honest but maybe the lady holding it just has small hands….

Mik

This video is quite a few days old now but I hadn’t come across it until today for some reason. There’s 8 mins & 31 seconds of airtime for the X10 and it’s UX Platforum interface this time. While it’s still a little jerky in places it’s definitely more responsive than the builds we saw in earlier videos.

Primera Mirada al Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 from FayerWayer on Vimeo.

Mik

ustwo.co.uk have produced promotional videos for Sony Ericsson’s high end devices: Satio, XPERIA X2 and XPERIA X10.

The videos are called “emotive ‘in-phone’ videos” and are…

“…designed to show off the awesome screen quality and video experience of these Sony Ericsson phones, plus be engaging, innovative and have a “wow” factor that makes people want to show them to their friends!”…

…to quote the producers.

Satio Emotive ‘in-phone’ Video:

XPERIA X2 Emotive ‘in-phone’ Video:

XPERIA X10 Emotive ‘in-phone’ Video:

Mik

The Saygus V1 VPhone is the first Android handset from Saygus and has been developed under the Open Development Initiative. The device features a 3.5″ 800 x 480px screen, 5MP camera and a 624MHz processor and will ship with Android 1.6 Donut (Eclair update is in the pipeline) with UI customisations looking suspiciously similar to HTC’s “Sense UI”.

The guys over at PhoneScoop.com have posted a hands on video, check it out below and head over there to see more of their thoughts about the device.

If the device is well received we may see an increased number of handsets from smaller manufacturers under the ODI.

Mik

Bump™ by Bump Technologies, Inc is an application you’ve probably heard of already on the iPhone, especially seeing as Apple highlighted in in one of their recent advertising campaigns. In case you haven’t heard though…

“Bump™ makes swapping contact information and photos as simple as bumping two phones together. No typing, no searching a list for the right person, no mistakes.”

It’s a cool app that takes advantage of modern hardware and now it’s available for Android devices too. So what another port from one platform to another you might ask…well it is but this time there’s something more. This is the first app I know of that works cross-platform, yes you can share between iPhone and Android and vice-versa and best of all, it’s free.

For more info head to bumptechnologies.com or just download the app to try for yourself.

Mik

Since the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 was announced there has been quite a lot of confusion over the number of colours supported by the screen. Sony Ericsson then tried to clarify the matter by answering some frequently asked questions but caused widespread discontent when they confirmed that the screen was a mere 65,536.

Now though, it seems there’s a little more to it. According to posts from SE support on their Developer Forum, it is Android 1.6 which is limiting the colours to 65k. The hardware in the device will support more, much more in fact as it is apparently capable of displaying the 16M colours everyone wanted.

So, there you go. Is that a clear answer at last or just more fuel for the fire of confusion, it’s up to you how much faith you put in those comments. We’ll likely have to wait and see to be absolutely sure!

Mik

Today is the 11th of November, which is Remembrance Day in the UK. Other countries may know it as Armistice Day or Veterans Day. It is on this day that we remember and pay our respects to the millions of men and women who have fought for us in war, many of them making the ultimate sacrifice and laying down their lives to ensure that we shall remain free.

To commemorate Remembrance Day TehkSeven have released a Poppy theme for various mobiles including Nokia E Series devices, Symbian 5th Edition Handsets and Sony Ericsson handsets. Please take a look and see if your handset is listed.

Lest We Forget.

[via TehkSeven]

I, like many of you, was hugely impressed when Satio was announced and I really wanted this to be the next great handset. The design is aesthetically fantastic and now that it’s here I still think it is as good looking as any phone available today, however, perhaps being something to look at is Satio’s best quality!

Let Me Hold It:

The Satio box is thoroughly unremarkable but the bundled accessories are impressive. The stylus is stylish, the headset is excellent and there’s a pretty substantial video out cable in there too.

Satio Accessories

The device itself has been made with Sony’s special brand of super glossy plastic which attracts finger prints and smudges from passers-by, let alone the actual user. Don’t expect to be able to admire that black sheen AND hold the phone at the same time unless you’re a snooker referee. Perhaps that’s why they chose a resistive touch screen, so you can handle the phone with pristine white gloves. The device also looks like it may be vulnerable to scratches but only time will tell as I’m not about to break out the sandpaper.

There’s a good compliment of hardware buttons including call/end, menu, camera shutter, camera modes, playback, volume and a very handy keylock slider but as with several other touch based devices there’s no direction input keys. As pretty as Satio may be, the straight sided construction of the device quickly becomes uncomfortable and it struggles to sit nicely for single handed use. This is made several times worse should you attempt to use the phone while charging. Once again Sony Ericsson has endeavoured to place the fastport in the worst possible position, here being on the left side just below centre. This means the charger protrudes annoyingly to obstruct either the right-hand fingers or left-hand palm preventing any comfortable hold.

Let Me Use It:

First boot provides a minor tutorial and the antiquated process of calibrating the resistive touch screen. This is a drag at the best of times but here it was a nightmare as the device repeatedly claims “too far from point x”, even when using the stylus smack-bang in the centre of each throbbing dot. I don’t know if this is common to all Satio’s but I experienced this on first use and again after another factory reset. Recalibration via the later menus runs without such issues but the accuracy and responsiveness of the screen remain questionable!

Once reaching the home screen things look good with the “Sony Ericsson” standby theme in use. Swiping left and right changes between the five predefined tabs while lists or pictures on these support the kinetic scrolling method everyone is used to, albeit nowhere near as responsive as that on an iPhone or Android device. Instead the scrolling often either fails or overshoots, at least until you get used to using slow and positive gestures…casual flicks are not welcome here. Customisation, meanwhile, is limited to say the least…you get to set the list of shortcuts and that’s it. Other Standby Themes are available but these are dull, offering nothing other than three static icons and custom shortcuts varying only the quantity or location.

Entering the main menu reveals a typical 4 x 3 icon grid and a single press on each continues to the next screen but this is where things start to get messy. Selecting contacts, for example, pops up a bland list of names (with no contact pictures other than the one currently selected) but inexplicably this list doesn’t scroll in the same kinetic manner as the (thumbnail rich) contact shortcuts list on the home screen. No, instead it is now completely the opposite! Trying to “throw” the list up only succeeds in making a selection bar go nuts while the list remains stationary. This selection bar must be grabbed and pushed to the bottom of the list in order to move down…I can only describe this as idiotic and un-natural and it makes accurate navigation of any list a virtual impossibility. The only acceptable solution is to pull out the stylus and drag the bar on the right of the screen, just like using Windows way back before the invention of scroll wheels. At this point the seemingly negligible omission of any direction buttons becomes a critical flaw.

But wait, it gets worse! In case the experience wasn’t yet uncomfortable enough things make a baffling change from single click to double click selection!?! On first encountering this I simply thought the phone was experiencing huge lag, in fact the device is fast, but it soon dawned that the UI was just suffering another irritating inconsistency.

Looking for any opportunity to escape this nightmare I fired up the camera with a satisfying snap of the lens cover. This is good, really good in fact, the 12MP camera doesn’t disappoint and the xenon flash makes indoor snaps easy. There’s an impressive feature set including Smile Shutter, Touch Capture, image stabilisation and BestPic making the camera probably the best thing about this device.

Satio Camera Sample

Of course Satio is Sony Ericsson’s “entertainment unlimited” flagship device so surely the other media features are up to scratch to? Thankfully they are thanks to the familiar, XMB-style Media menu which remains intuitive and benefits from convenient YouTube integration. Kinetic scrolling makes a return here which would ordinarily be great but on Satio it really just adds further confusion to a terribly mixed up control system.

Eventually I had to leave the camera and Media to try other essential components such as messaging and web browsing. Messaging is as disjointed as the rest of the UI! The standard messaging app doesn’t display conversation lists, a separate “Conversations” app is required for such a view. New message notifications ignore this app and lead to the default messaging view while also failing to even preview who the message is from. Upon replying to a text the on screen keyboard does not even appear, making you jab at the screen until it responds and selects the text input area before displaying your selected input method. On screen keyboards leave plenty to be desired too, all feeling a little too unresponsive and inaccurate for fast typing which leads to frequent mistakes. The mini qwerty is laughable and while the full screen qwerty is better there is annoyingly no auto-rotation to change between them. Handwriting recognition is reminiscent of that on UIQ, I like this but many will not.

Web browsing is adequate but the lack of kinetic scrolling again becomes painful while added irritation is provided by the fact that the device cannot automatically switch between network coverage and WiFi. One or the other is exclusively selected and if you want to save entering more menus the only option is to have “Always Ask” activated so that you must choose the connection accessible to you when starting browsing.

I’ve come to realise that Satio is a mongrel, an impure mix of Nokia and Sony Ericsson and with rather more Nokia than I’d have liked (just look at the screen below). Virtually all of my dislikes are due to the S60 OS and the poor execution of it on touch screen devices:

Satio Nokia Nokia Nokia Nokia Nokia

I was yet to use S60 5^th Edition properly until now and perhaps was naïve to think that it would be better than this or that SE would have made better use of it. Unfortunately this device encapsulates the convoluted awkwardness of S60 and compounds it with the worst points of touch screen devices. There is nice hardware here, splashed with a couple of good software elements but there is no consistency and ultimately the user experience is confusing and annoying.

Let Me Get Rid Of It:

I’m bitterly disappointed with Satio, too much of the experience is uncomfortable and while the camera and Media are a saving grace, these are not enough to make me tolerate daily use of this device. If you want an intuitive and responsive touch screen phone, keep looking…and I suggest towards Android and iPhone.

If, however, you bizarrely enjoy the general unpleasantness of S60 5^th Edition and require each of your UI screens to operate completely differently, go ahead, you should at least end up with some decent photos!

Mik

Mik’s Previous Opinions:

• HTC Magic
• Introduction

You could be forgiven for thinking that Garmin may not be on the best of terms with Google and Android after the announcement of Google Maps Navigation but it seems they may actually be thinking “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”.

The slide above is from Garmin’s Q3 2009 Earnings Call Webcast and clearly shows that the nüvifone family will be extended to Android in 2010. Of course, no further details are given but it seems Android can expect two new turn-by-turn applications, the more the merrier.

Mik

Everybody knows Adobe Photoshop for PC and Mac but now there is a mobile version for you Android phone with “Photoshop.com Mobile App“.

You’ll be able to edit and tweak pictures…in fact I’ll let Adobe explain:

Perfect your pictures with the Photoshop.com Mobile App on your Android phone. Simply drag your finger to crop, adjust color, apply effects—you name it.

• Crop, rotate, and color-correct with the touch of a finger.
• Add soft focus or change to black & white with a click.
• Go classic by adding a sepia tint.
• Intuitive Photo Browser for viewing local and online images.

When your image is perfect, make it your phone background.

Once you’ve created a Photoshop.com account you’ll also be able to upload your photos and store them online. This is great to see on Android as well as the iPhone and a sure sign of the recognition that the platform is gaining. The Adobe site states that the app is available now on the Android Market but I found nothing when following their QR Code so I assume it’s location dependent at the moment i.e. U.S. only.

Here’s a tutorial video from Adobe to show you more:

Cheers,

Mik

Everybody is busy making their own custom UI for Android and not to be outdone by SE’s UX Platform or Motorola’s MOTOBLUR, Samsung have produced TouchWiz which you can expect to see on the Behold II handset.

This is a cube based navigation system, perhaps reminiscent of the Linux cube, but I’ll let you see that for yourself…here’s the vid:

Cheers,

Mik

The Android Developer Challenge 2 has now entered the second round so download or update the ADC2 app on your Android phone for your chance to vote.

There are 20 applications in 10 categories now competing for the honours and the prize money is quite impressive!

Categories:

• Education/Reference
• Games: Casual/Puzzle
• Games: Arcade/Action
• Social Networking
• Lifestyle
• Productivity/Tools
• Media
• Entertainment
• Travel
• Misc

Awards:

For each category:

• 1st prize: $100,000
• 2nd prize: $50,000
• 3rd prize: $25,000

Overall:

• 1st prize: $150,000 (meaning the overall winner will receive $250,000)
• 2nd prize: $50,000 (meaning the 2nd prize winner will receive up to $150,000)
• 3rd prize: $25,000 (meaning the 3rd prize winner will receive up to $125,000)

The final judging and announcement of winner is expected to be later this month.