Przedstawiciel PLAY LUBLIN

Now my friends over in our customer service team have started to push out their material around our new phones.

For those of you new to Android or the Xperia range there lots of goodies around the basics and the different features over at their youtube channel at www.youtube.com/sonyericssonsupport

Many of these videos go more into details about specific features and help you find answers to common questions. You also find videos made for your specific phone in the Support Application in your phone. You find that  in the application tray or by clicking the Support Widget on the rightmost desktop pane. (As shown in the picture above with the headline “Experience More”)

I know that many of you here are very much in the know on how to use your phones but for those of you a bit new to Android or our Xperia range these can hopefully assist quite a bit. Perhaps some of you have suggestions on what you think we should educate more around? If so, please let me know in the comments section. One big advantage of having this kind of dynamic support application is that we can update the content in it to help out with things we find many consumers have questions around.

If you need support in any way don’t ever hesitate to contact your local Sony Ericsson support center or find your way over to our support forum at talk.sonyericsson.com

Here’s one of the videos they made to explain the basics and some of the features of Xperia arc.

At this year’s Google I/O 2011 Developer Conference, Sony Ericsson joined Google in giving out Xperia™ PLAY devices at the “Bringing C and C++ Games to Android” session. By putting the devices directly into the hands of developers, we hope this provides the spark for seeing more games optimized for Xperia™ PLAY. We’ve also provided a set of Game Developer Recommendations on our Developer World site.

Kim Ahlstrom, Platform Software Development Lead at Sony Ericsson, had been working with Dan Galpin from Google on parts of the presentation, including tips on graphics and drawing for performance. Dan also talked about NativeActivity, and how it’s used to access the touch pad on Xperia™ PLAY, and he provides great information and tips that developers can follow. You can watch the full presentation recorded by Google on the GoogleDeveloper YouTube channel, and in addition to checking out the graphics and NativeActivity topics, check out the end of the session after the Q&A. The reaction by the audience when they learn they will be receiving an Xperia™ PLAY is fun to see!

Google I/O 2011 Attendees receiving Xperia PLAY vouchers.

Thanks again to everyone who came to meet and speak with us at Google I/O. It has been a great event for Sony Ericsson, and we will continue to stay connected to the Android developer community through events and activities like this.

More information

• View the “Bringing C and C++ Games to Android” session on YouTube>>>
• Get game developer recommendations on how to optimize for the Xperia™ PLAY>>>
• Check out our Developer Program event calendar>>>

The Ericsson Application Awards prize ceremony is taking place on June 22 in Stockholm, Sweden, and we just heard it will all be livestreamed from the Ericsson Studio at Ericsson Headquarters. The event is starting at 10 AM CET and will last for approximately two hours. In the broadcast, you can listen to telecom industry executives speaking about the latest applications and innovations.  This will then be followed by the award ceremony.

The Ericsson Application Awards is a global competition to inspire both aspiring programmers and hardcore coders to come up with useful widgets for mobile devices. The finalists are soon to be chosen, and the winner will then be presented on June 22.

For more details, check out the Ericsson Application Awards website.

Now XPERIA^TM PLAY has hit the stores in some markets and there’s a press-release out with all the details – you can find that here.

Many more markets are added over the coming weeks. 

I’ve also seen that there are some reviews out already and I’m glad to see that they all seem to be very positive.

(I’ve seen several confusing RAM and storage memory numbers though and would like to clarify. Both XPERIA^TM arc and XPERIA^TM PLAY do have 512 MB of RAM. The other numbers seen such as 320MB , 400 MB etc describe the amount of free storage memory in the phone.)

Back to the subject of the day – Xperia PLAY is now shipping and the press release also outlines the games available at launch.

One really nice thing about Xperia^TM PLAY as a platform for game developers is it being a fully fledged Android smartphone which really can boost the amount of available games. There’s already lots of games out there for Android and most game developers see it as very important platform for them.

Adding support for the unique game pad of the Xperia^TM PLAY is also something that we see more and more of them working on. From a development perspective it’s really easy as described in this article on our developer world blog already. Just head over there if you’re a developer and want to optimize your games for Xperia^TM PLAY.

From a gaming perspective this of course opens up to an even bigger world of available games and we see lots of games optimized for Xperia^TM PLAY becoming available already now at launch.

To further help you in finding games that are optimized for XPERIA^TM PLAY we have created the “XPERIA^TM PLAY Launcher” that is included in the phone and starts automatically when you slide out the game pad. As shown in the picture above it shows you the optimized games you have installed. It also highlights optimized games available for download so that you as a consumer don’t have to have concerns if a game will use the new features unique to XPERIA^TM PLAY or not.

Here are some of the highlighted games as described in the press release: 

• Assassins Creed Altair’s Chronicles HD  – one of the most popular gaming franchises, with action, puzzles and stealth gameplay set in the Middle East of the Crusades
• Need for Speed – Grab the wheel of the fastest, hottest, and most powerful cars in the world. One of the most successful video game franchises of all time.
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell– The latest instalment in this key franchise. Special Forces operative and renegade Sam Fisher returns to fight a corrupt secret agency.
• Dungeon Defenders Second Wave – stunning graphics, intense gameplay and exclusive on Xperia PLAY.
• Gun Bros – choose your weapon and join the ‘Freakishly Rugged’ action heroes Percy and Francis Gun as they take on a terrifying menagerie of alien beings.
• Galaxy on Fire 2 – escape into space with hours of deep gameplay and mind blowing graphics in this space exploration game.
• Guns ‘n’ Glory – you lead a gang of bandits in this popular and award-winning casual tower defence game with a hilarious western theme.
• Worms – send your worm platoons into battle in this award-winning turn-based strategy game.
• Zenonia 2 – The lost memories – Classic and popular RPG. Numerous quests following an epic storyline.
• Backstab – An epic 3^rd person pirate adventure that incorporates intense sword fights and other dynamic combat modes. Launching on April 14^th exclusively on Xperia™ PLAY. 
• N.O.V.A.2 – Awesome graphics, intense multiplayer gameplay, this First-Person Shooter makes its Android debut exclusively on Xperia PLAY.

In addition Sony Ericsson is happy to confirm that Asphalt 6 – the latest instalment of one of the leading and top-selling racing games will be available for free exclusively on Xperia™ PLAY.

But that’s only some of the highlights. There’s already now much much more. The very open eco-system of Android combined with the easy ways of adding support for the game pad really makes this just the beginning of what’s to come!

There is also a range of PlayStation® original games available at launch (in selected markets initially). These are comprised of a pre-install of the PS One classic Crash Bandicoot* and a further 5 PlayStation® original games available to download via the PlayStation® pocket application in Xperia™ PLAY.

• Cool Boarders 2 – Time to pick up that snowboard again and rip through the snow with 16 intense racetracks
• Destruction Derby – Original car carnage.  Buckle yourself into a new car and destroy it but send your opponents to the junkyard first.
• Jumping Jack Flash – A first person platformer like no other. Leap around 6 colourful worlds in the cockpit of a robotic rabbit, hunting for the evil galactic property developer Baron Aloha
• MediEvil – Resurrected 100 years later you have returned to defeat the sorcerer Zarok.  Perhaps the world’s least worthy hero, you set out to save the land once again–for the first time.
• Syphon Filter – Become Gabe Logan: guerilla war expert. A man on a personal crusade to bring down an international terrorist ring and eliminate a deadly virus.

More games from Sony Computer Entertainment will be added to Xperia™ PLAY on a regular basis.

Here’s the full list of games from the press release:

(All of these should already be available or become available during the coming week.)

** Pre-install may vary by territory 

• Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior from Digital Legends (pre-installed)
• FIFA 2010 from EA Mobile (pre-installed**)
• Sims 3 from EA Mobile (pre-installed**)
• Star Battalion from Gameloft (pre-installed**)
• Tetris from EA mobile (pre-installed**)
• Asphalt 6 from Gameloft (free to download)
• Dungeon Defenders: Second Wave from Trendy Entertainment
• Galaxy on Fire 2 from Fishlabs
• Assassins Creed from Gameloft
• Need for Speed SHIFT from  EA Mobile
• Worms from EA Mobile
• Nova 2 from Gameloft
• Modern Combat Black Pegasus from Gameloft
• Guns n Glory from Handygames
• Reckless Racing from Polarbit 
• Real Football 2011 from Gameloft
• Gun Bros from Glu Mobile 
• Racer Luma from Arcade/Unity 
• Cordy from SilverTree Media
• Aporkalypse from Handygames
• Brothers in Arms Global Front from Gameloft
• Guerrilla Bob from Angry Mob Games/Unity
• Let’s Golf 2 from Gameloft
• Zenonia 2 from Gamevil 
• Cyberlords from Handygames
• Guitar Hero™ Warriors of Rock Mobile from Glu Mobile 
• Age of Zombies from Halfbrick Studios
• Spectral Souls from HyperDevBox Japan 
• Splinter Cell Conviction from Gameloft
• Air Attack from Art in Games/Unity
• Armageddon Squadron from Polarbit 
• Uno from Gameloft
• InfeCCt from Handygames 
• Spiderman total Mayhem from Gameloft
• Millionaire City from Digital Chocolate
• Avatar from Gameloft
• Raging Thunder 2 from Polarbit
• Homerun Battle 3D from Com2us Games
• Aftermath XHD from Jakyl 
• I Must Run from GameLion
• Baseball Superstars 2011 from Gamevil
• Ground Effect Pro from Jakyl 
• ZeNonia from Gamevil
• Super KO Boxing 2 from Glu Mobile
• Farm Story from Team Lava
• Wave Blazer from Polarbit
• Soccer Superstars from Gamevil
• Battle Bears from Skyvu 
• Tower Blocks New York from Digital Chocolate
• Super Dynamite Fishing from Handygames
• Iron Sight from Polarbit
• Toonwarz from Polarbit
• Restaurant Story from Team Lava
• Escape from AMA
• Raving Babies from AMA
• Bakery Story from Team Lava
• Denki Blocks! Deluxe from Jakyl 
• Rollercoaster Rush from Digital Chocolate

PlayStation original games:

• Crash Bandicoot from Sony Computer Entertainment
• Cool Boarders 2 from Sony Computer Entertainment
• Destruction Derby from Sony Computer Entertainment
• Jumping Jack Flash from Sony Computer Entertainment
• MediEvil from Sony Computer Entertainment
• Syphon Filter from Sony Computer Entertainment

* In France Syphon filter will be pre-installed on Xperia PLAY.

Now when I’m back home I’ve had some time to go through all of the comments we’ve got during the week.

First of all – thanks for your engagement! That’s what I’m here for and your feedback is very important to us.

As I’ve said many times before I assure you that your feedback from here, even when I don’t have straight out answers for you, is always forwarded and does have an impact on our development!

So here are some of the most frequently asked questions during the week. (there are some more questions I saw where I don’t have full answers yet but I’ll keep chasing!)

Q: Why is my comment not showing up? Are you censoring the comments section?

A: There’s two different things at play here. First of all because of the traffic load on this blog we have had to add a caching scheme also for the comments section. This means that it might take up to 10 minutes until your comment is visible. Secondly we have a spam filter. (you wouldn’t believe the amount of spam that hits popular word press based blogs these days) The spam filter usually does a very good job in removing “true” spam generated by bots etc. However it also from time to time unfortunately blocks out legit comments. I do try to keep up with the spam folder but sometimes because of the huge amount of spam I miss some comments. We also are on the corporate .com domain of our company so sometimes we also need to actively remove some comments due to bad language, personal attacks or similar. We don’t ever actively remove comments just for being negative or ciritical.

Q: Are you working on Android 2.2 or Android 2.3 for the 2010 products.

A: No – as explained earlier we currently don’t plan to upgrade the 2010 products to Android versions beyond 2.1

Q: Why hasn’t my “kit” gotten the 2.1 update yet? When will it come?

A: We still have a few kits (currently 13 for e.g. the X10) where we still are working with our operator partner on getting the software ready and approved. I don’t have the details on the ongoing work for them but I assure you that we are working on it. The reason for this is as explained earlier that different operators and markets have different customizations and therefore needs to be worked on until we agree with our partner that it’s ready for release.

Q: Wasn’t DLNA supposed to be in the latest update for Xperia X10?

A: That was our plan, as stated here back in May last year. However lots of things has changed since then like splitting the update into two parts, changes to timing, adding Pinch Zoom touch etc. One of the consequences of all those changes was unfortunately that DLNA had to be de-scoped. I know that there are 3rd party apps available that enables DLNA though so hopefully you can enjoy one of those.

Q: When will these new products be available?

A: Availability will vary between markets but as a global general statement the Xperia™ arc,  Xperia™ neo and Xperia™ PLAY are planned to hit the first shelves before March is over and the Xperia™ pro is planned to launch during Q2 this year.

Q: I’ve seen YouTube videos where your new phones seem to suffer in performance and some sample pictures that don’t seem to have the quality they should, are those final?

A: No – in preparing for the launch of our phones we have frequent releases of new internal test software and there are also different hardware revisions on the way up until launch. Lots of optimization is done late in the process and the release version will be optimized in many aspects.

Q: Do your new products have an included office document editor?

A: Our plan is the following: One of them does – the Xperia™ pro has OfficeSuite pro which enables creation and editing of common office document formats. The Xperia™ arc,  Xperia™ neo and Xperia™ PLAY are planned to have OfficeSuite in a lighter version that enables opening and viewing documents but not creation or editing. The pre-loaded applications can however differ between markets and operator customizations. So this is the planned standard content but the phone you buy might be different!

Q: Do any of your newly announced phones have MHL?

A: No – The Xperia™ arc,  Xperia™ neo and Xperia™ pro do have a micro-HDMI connector though.

Q: What Android version will these new producs launch on? There are rumors of Android 2.4 already!

A: The Xperia™ arc,  Xperia™ neo and Xperia™ PLAY will launch on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the latest version of Android for smartphones. Going into detailed sub-versions they will launch on Android 2.3.2 and our current plan is to update them 2.3.3 quite shortly after launch. The differences between 2.3.2 and 2.3.3 really are minor though and mostly tied to NFC functionality which these products does not have the chipsets for. Therefore it shouldn’t represent any big feature step-ups in our products. There is no such thing as Android 2.4 announced by Google yet so we can’t really comment on those rumors.

Q: Why do you lock the boot loader of your devices? Isn’t Android supposed to be open source?

A: Yes, Android is an open source platform. Anyone can download it, modify it to their liking and install it on hardware they have designed.  A mobile device is much more than the operating system. In our phones there are functionality that have to be secure such as SIM-lock and DRM. We currently don’t have a solution in place to secure that while opening the bootloader and therefore it would break legal agreements with many of our partners if we do.”

Q: I’ve seen that some of the new products have a second microphone on the back. What is it used for?

A: It is used for noise suppression during phone calls. I’ve seen your questions about stereo recording for video recording and have forwarded your request for potential future updates.

Q:Why doesn’t Xperia™ PLAY have HDMI out while the other new products do?

A: Designing a smartphone is all about focus and balance. We have prioritized a truly immersive gaming experience in Xperia™ PLAY. In order to deliver this we had to make some priorities, particularly regarding the HDMI connector the physical design would have had to change which would have had an impact on the gaming experience.

Q: Which of your new phones have a front facing camera?

A: Xperia™ neo, Xperia™ pro and Xperia™ PLAY have a front facing camera while the The Xperia™ arc does not. For the Xperia™ arc we chose to not accept any compromise regarding design and slimness to really create an iconic product. Fitting a front facing camera within those targets just wasn’t possible.

So that were some of the questions I found – keep ‘em coming!

Yesterday the European Parliament voted for a compromise with the European Commission and the Council of Ministers regarding the review of the RoHS directive. The RoHS review include a new methodology for identification of substances for future restrictions. However, EU was not ready to take the step to include BFR (Brominated Flame Retardants) and PVC.

The new method for inclusion of substances is a step forward because from now it is stated that considerations also shall include the waste and end-of-life phase.

According to a recent statement from 150 scientists BFR and PVC produce hazardous dioxins and furans when they are incinerated at insufficiently high temperatures e.g. in sub standard recycling conditions. This was also one of the reasons for us to start the now concluded phase out of BFR and PVC from our products.

As far as I can understand this will inevitably will lead to inclusion of BFR and PVC into restrictions under RoHS the question is only when…..

Last week, GreenPeace released the 16th version of their Guide to Greener Electronics, where they rank the 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change. GreenPeace’s three goals with the ranking is to get companies to:

• Clean up their products by eliminating hazardous substances.
• Take back and recycle their products responsibly once they become obsolete.
• Reduce the climate impacts of their operations and products.

We are proud that Sony Ericsson stays in second place in the rank, with praise from GreenPeace regarding our work on the phase out of unwanted substances and our investments in green energy. But we also take the weaknesses pointed out by GreenPeace seriously and promise to focus extra hard to improve those scores for the next update of the ranking in three months time. Off course we aim for nothing short of that top position, and to be the first company to score 10 points!

If you want to read the full GreenPeace rank, please follow this link:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics/how-the-companies-line-up/

GLOBAL – If one of our readers tells us that Nokia Maps are heavenly, who are we to judge? They are – of course – correct. The comment hasn’t gone unnoticed by the irkafirka team…

GLOBAL – We’re building a new Nokia Conversations mobile app and documenting the process as we go. In the next stage of the process, we’ve received some sketches and wireframes from Digia,…

During the last week, we got many beautiful entries in our search to find out all the beautiful beaches that you can find on maps.ovi.com/3D. Many of you sent in entries not just from the 20 cities covered…