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GLOBAL – Users of Mobile Documents by Visiarc will be happy to know that Nokia Beta Labs now has an update ready for download, bringing the latest version to 0.9.20. With added features along with some bug fixes, anybody using the old version should update now. And if you haven’t tried it…

Od jutra w ofercie podstawowej: Samsung Galaxy Ace Samsung GALAXY Ace S5830 został zaprojektowany z myślą o zaawansowanych użytkownikach, którym zależy zarówno na możliwościach, jak i wyjątkowym wyglądzie telefonu. Smartfon wyposażono w 3,5-calowy wyświetlacz, zamknięty w eleganckiej, cienkiej i lekko zaokrąglonej obudowie. Jej faktura sprawia, że telefon będzie pewnie i wygodnie leżał w dłoni, przy [...]

Niebawem strona internetowa Play będzie dostępna pod adresem www.play.pl Już wiosną tego roku rozpocznie się proces migracji portalu korporacyjnego playmobile.pl na nowy adres play.pl. Portal Playmobile.pl to jedno z podstawowych narzędzi kontaktu PLAY z klientami. W 2010 serwis przeszedł znaczącą modernizację obejmującą optymalizację procesów sprzedażowych zarówno od strony procesowej, jak i wizualnej. Obecnie, wg. badania [...]

Gdybym miał podsumować tegoroczny kongres to oczywiście najważniejsza z mojej perspektywy była prezentacja. Wydaje Wam się, że to tylko kilka slajdów, ale kilka osób miało z tym sporo pracy i stresu przez dobrych kilka dni. Kolejnym wydarzeniem, o którym mówili i pisali wszyscy był nieistniejący jeszcze smartfon Nokii z Windows Phone 7 na pokładzie. To [...]

Od jutra w ofercie podstawowej: Samsung Galaxy Ace Samsung GALAXY Ace S5830 został zaprojektowany z myślą o zaawansowanych użytkownikach, którym zależy zarówno na możliwościach, jak i wyjątkowym wyglądzie telefonu. Smartfon wyposażono w 3,5-calowy wyświetlacz, zamknięty w eleganckiej, cienkiej i lekko zaokrąglonej obudowie. Jej faktura sprawia, że telefon będzie pewnie i wygodnie leżał w dłoni, przy [...]

Niebawem strona internetowa Play będzie dostępna pod adresem www.play.pl Już wiosną tego roku rozpocznie się proces migracji portalu korporacyjnego playmobile.pl na nowy adres play.pl. Portal Playmobile.pl to jedno z podstawowych narzędzi kontaktu PLAY z klientami. W 2010 serwis przeszedł znaczącą modernizację obejmującą optymalizację procesów sprzedażowych zarówno od strony procesowej, jak i wizualnej. Obecnie, wg. badania [...]

Gdybym miał podsumować tegoroczny kongres to oczywiście najważniejsza z mojej perspektywy była prezentacja. Wydaje Wam się, że to tylko kilka slajdów, ale kilka osób miało z tym sporo pracy i stresu przez dobrych kilka dni. Kolejnym wydarzeniem, o którym mówili i pisali wszyscy był nieistniejący jeszcze smartfon Nokii z Windows Phone 7 na pokładzie. To [...]

Ever since we’ve laid our eyes on leaked images and information regarding the Xperia Play and Neo and since Sony Ericsson finally announced them, all of us have tried to figure out when will they be released and how much will they cost.

The Xperia Play will launch in the last week of March according to David Hilton, Sony Ericsson UK’s Marketing Director. Whilst the Xperia Play will be with the operators and retailers in the last week of March Sony Ericsson have asked them to embargo sales until the 1st of April (or rather midnight on 31st March). David Hilton explained:

“What we are going to do for the Xperia Play to make sure it has the most impactful launch is whilst we will ship it in the end of March we’re asking all of our customers to effectively embargo sales until the 1st of April so that on that Friday you can go into any channel and be able to buy. So technically it’s the 1st of April and people might say you’ve let us down it’s not Q1, but we will ship it into the market in Q1“.

The handset will launch on pretty much all UK operators and retailers in an effort to make it as broad a proposition as possible. This was a conscious decision “We believe that for Sony Ericsson as a business … the consumers are better served by having it across all channels so we don’t want to restrict it to customers who can only buy it through one network“.

Commenting on game pricing Hilton said “The expectations I’ve been set are probably between two to three pounds maybe up to ten pounds“.

Turning to the Neo we’re probably looking at a late March release for that handset too with Hilton commenting that Sony Ericsson “… had a very high level of confidence that the Xperia Neo … will be shipped in the lst week of March“.

Pre-ordering prices:

Xperia Play: £539.99
Neo: £374.99

Both do not have a Retail Price established yet so we will have to wait until important carriers such as Vodafone or O2 introduce them in their offers.

In a word … probably. Speaking with Sony Ericsson representatives I was told that since the Android 2.4 update (still to be known as Gingerbread by the way) will largely be about providing multi-core support to smartphones there might be little point in upgrading the likes of the arc or the Play since they are not multi-core devices.

Having said that the update is likely to bring a few other improvements even if multi-core support is the headline act and given the image Sony Ericsson have of being slow to adopt the latest firmware for their devices it’s more likely that any update, even if relatively minor will indeed be made available.

It’s also easier for Sony Ericsson to update the arc and Play since they made a conscious effort to bog them down with less customization e.g. Mediascape. Thus updates should be quicker in working their way down the pipeline.

UPDATE: Fudzilla are reporting that Sony Ericsson have informed them that the Xperia Play will indeed be upgraded to Android 2.4.

In my last piece I gave some initial impressions of the Xperia Play from the launch event in Barcelona, but I want to go intoa bit more detail with regards to the software side of things.

We saw a few of the titles that will be available for launch on Sunday night and on the whole they were good. I’m not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but I genuinely had fun playing around with them on the Xperia Play (so much so that I had to be asked to give someone else a shot at one point).

Asphalt 6, an arcade racer, was my title of choice for the evening and as I said it was pretty fun. The graphics were good,not at the absolute cutting edge I’d say, but that was to be expected. I heard a few people compare the graphics with the PS2 so take from that what you will. The controls worked great and really got you into the game rather than feeling like this was just another smartphone that has a couple of games on it. The analogue pads in particular were appreciated.

There will be five games pre-installed at launch; Asphalt 6 as I mentioned, Sims 3, Fifa 10, Star Battalion and Bruce Lee (yes it is named just Bruce Lee). They were all good enough fun to play and some of them looked pretty decent too in terms of graphics, but I have to admit to feeling a little underwhelmed at the choice of titles. For example, why Fifa 10 and not 11? That was a sentiment I heard repeated from others on the night, the feeling that even though what was on offer was good enough there should have been some major title on show that really pushed the device and could show off just what it was capable of.

That might sound like me being picky, but the success of the Xperia Play and the platform in general is going to hinge on attracting gamers to the device and you aren’t going to do that without a consistent stable of major titles. As I was leaving

Barcelona I heard from a few sources that more announcements on publishers and games would be made ’soon’, maybe some this week and maybe some within the next few weeks.

One aspect of the games that was drawing a lot of praise was multi-player support, which seems to be device agnostic in the sense that it isn’t limited to Xperia Plays. You can be playing Fifa 10 on your Xbox and your mate can join in from his Xperia play. Pretty sweet. Many of the 50 or so launch titles should support multi-player options.

It’s also interesting to note that Crash Bandicoot is a PS1 title. That should mean we can look forward to more PS1 titles appearing in due course and perhaps titles from other devices (PSP anyone?).

In terms of game pricing Nathan Vautier, the head of Sony Ericsson UK, indicated titles being in the £5-£10 range. He did, however, seem to suggest that we might expect to see titles below the £5 mark although he didn’t say whether this would be at launch or something that might come in later.