Sony Ericsson's Zylo slider earns FCC approval

There's nothing quite like the harsh lighting of an FCC approval lab to call out a phone's true colors -- if a handset can look good here, it can look good pretty much anywhere. Needless to say, Sony Ericsson's Zylo isn't looking quite as slick and put-together here as it does in the company's own press shots; if we had to guess, countless engineers have smudged it up and beat the heck out of it moving it from machine to machine while taking radiation measurements by the time it made it to the camera. Anyhow, the version we're seeing here is quadband GSM plus UMTS bands I and VIII, which works out to 900 / 2100; in other words, there's not a snowball's chance you'll be using it for high-speed data stateside. Not a huge loss, we figure.

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Insignia reveals 8-inch Infocast Internet Media Display, Sony Dash is like 'brother?'

Maybe we're just seeing things, but darn if Insignia's new Infocast Internet Media Display isn't a dead ringer for the Sony Dash. Out of seemingly nowhere, Best Buy's own in-house electronics brand has outed an 8-inch connected display meant to bring glanceable information as well as a slew of web-based widgets to your bedroom / office / den / underground cavern. Boasting inbuilt 802.11b/g WiFi, an integrated microphone, SRS audio and an 800 x 600 resolution touchpanel, the Infocast is equipped with 2GB of internal storage as well as a media card reader, and in case you couldn't guess, the software is provided by none other than Chumby Industries. Users should have no issues displaying photos, video and music, and the $169.99 asking price is a full $30 less than the Dash's MSRP. According to Best Buy's website, this here gizmo is simply "coming soon," but according to our man on the inside, it'll be ready for purchase on June 20th. So, who's down for squeezing a battery into this thing for some makeshift tablet action?

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Sony Ericsson 'Shakira' is a lower-cost X10 alternative?

Call it the Legend to HTC's Desire, if you will, but we're hearing that Sony Ericsson may have another Android device in the works that would slot in beneath the high-end Xperia X10. The phone -- allegedly codenamed "Shakira" -- is said to have a 3-inch display, but otherwise, we don't have any details; the tipster says that it could be running either Android 1.6 or 2.1, and with Sony Ericsson's custom skin in full effect, it's impossible to tell from this shot. Of course, the SE community has a legendary reputation for creating unbelievably convincing mockups, so we can't rule this real until the day it's announced; then again, it stands to reason that they'd want to make something cheaper than an X10 and less of a novelty gadget than the X10 mini. Stay tuned, folks.

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Microsoft Kin Two gets torn apart, reveals Sony image sensor

Sure, we already know most of the Kin Two's main specs, but there's nothing like a proper teardown to find out exactly what makes something tick, and the folks from Chipworks have now kindly ripped one apart so you don't have to. Among the highlights are the expected NVIDIA Tegra APX2600 processor, a slew of chips and memory from the likes of Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Hynix, and Samsung and, perhaps most notably, an image sensor from none other than Sony. That sensor, the IMX046, is one of the smallest in its class with a pixel size of just 1.4 microns and, according to Chipworks, something of a surprise -- they were expecting a sensor from OmniVision. Hit up the links below for the Chipworks' complete blow-by-blow account, as well as some further analysis from the folks at iFixit -- and, no, there isn't a teardown of the Kin One just yet.

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Hacker gets XBMC running on his PS3, tells you how (video)

Sony's disabling of Linux on the PS3 has made many people very angry, some more so than others, but for an enthusiast named madshaun1984 it was something of a call to arms. He didn't file a lawsuit or whine about it in forums -- oh no. He sat down to get XBMC working and has succeeded, albeit slowly. Right now the CellSDK that this build relies upon is not up to snuff performance-wise, so just scrolling through media is somewhat less than fun and you can forget about playing it. But, the hope is to improve that and to turn the PS3 into a proper media-streaming Linux box... so long as you don't update the firmware, anyway. Full instructions on how to do this are at the source link, but be prepared to spend the better part of an afternoon at it if you want to try yourself. For those not ready for that kind of commitment (or anyone who already has the latest firmware) you can just enjoy the video proof after the break.


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Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is likely NTT DoCoMo's best selling smartphone -- ever

Japan's wireless networks have a longstanding, legendary reputation for existing in some parallel plane that's technologically light years ahead of the rest of the world, but that reputation's unquestionably in greater danger today than in any point in the past fifteen years. Why? Though the featurephones offered by NTT DoCoMo, SoftBank, and KDDI are ultra high-spec beasts, they're still featurephones at the end of the day -- and this comes at a time when smartphones are finally becoming true cultural phenomena across the remainder of the developed world (and, in some cases, the developing world).

There's no greater evidence of this than the word this week that Sony Ericsson's Xperia X10 -- a phone that's been met with lukewarm reviews, including from Engadget Japanese's own Ittousai -- has allegedly become NTT DoCoMo's best-selling smartphone in history, a fact that would seem completely inexplicable in any other market globally. What makes it possible in Japan, of course, is DoCoMo's historically lame selection of true smartphones, a lineup that currently includes localized versions of the HTC Magic, and the original HTC Touch Diamond and BlackBerry Bold. What's more, many of these devices integrate poorly with popular carrier services on account of their super-tight control of the operating systems running across the featurephone lineup, something they've got less control over with a device running Android or Windows Mobile.

In other words, when it's reported that DoCoMo had sold 100,000 X10s in its first 20 days -- and a third-party retailer claims that the Magic-esque HT-03A is the next best seller at 80,000 units in 10 months -- it seems plausible, if not likely (and Ittousai agrees). Yeah, even though the localized device has been plagued with performance problems and bugs, incompatibilities with DoCoMo's i-mode push email, and so on. It's hard to say what it's going to take for these guys to make an honest-to-goodness transition to the brave new world of open platforms and freewheeling third-party development, but they're clearly not there yet.

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Sony Ericsson's Zylo and Spiro offer music, weird names on the cheap

As many smartphone operating systems as Sony Ericsson is actively supporting simultaneously (three, at our latest count), its featurephone business continues to solider on, too -- after all, there's that whole Walkman brand to pimp, right? The latest models to break cover -- the oddly named Spiro and Zylo sliders -- were announced this week with the promise of bringing high-end music capability at an "affordable entry point," and considering the specs, we don't doubt that the company will be able to meet that goal. Starting at the lower end of the range, the Spiro offers a 2 megapixel camera along with a 2.2-inch QVGA display; the Zylo ups the ante with a 3.2 megapixel shooter with geotagging, a 2.6-inch display, 3G, and some advanced audio capabilities. Both models will hit "selected markets" early in the third quarter; follow the break for some promo video of both models in action.



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Sony Ericsson Vivaz available on Vodafone, Satio looks on with envy

If you don't have a need for a physical keyboard -- or you're just not willing to wait long enough for the Vivaz Pro to come to market -- then you might want to take a gander at Sony Ericsson's plain-Jane Vivaz now that it's available from Vodafone in the UK. The Symbian-powered slate features a 3.2-inch WVGA display, 8.1 megapixel still camera, and 720p video capture with continuous autofocus -- a truly unique feature for a cameraphone at any price. As is usually the case with these guys, you're able to score the Vivaz for a big, fat naught on contract as long as you're willing to pony up at least £30 (about $46) a month on your plan.



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Sony's Dash goes on sale, officially this time

Yeah, we spotted the Dash at Best Buy a few days ago, accidentally eating up shelf space, but we've finally hit that April 29th launch date and Sony has unleashed the non-tablet touchscreen device into the wild. The $199 unit, which is somewhat of a branded Chumby, sports a 7-inch screen, best-alarm-clock-you-ever-owned good looks, and access to streaming media from CBS, Netflix, Pandora, and more. If you can bottle your enthusiasm for just a bit longer we'll have our own impressions of the device posted soon enough, but nobody's stopping you from snapping this up from Sony's website, your local Sony Style store, or whatever other retailer you might have in mind. PR is after the break.

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Sony drops Pocket Reader price to $169... are e-readers about to get super cheap?

The Wall Street Journal noted this morning that Sony's rather quietly dropped the price of its Pocket Reader about $30 to $169. Now, it's actually what amounts to a sale -- the price cut lasts only through April 4th -- but that date, just two days after the iPad is made available, could give us a little insight into the timing of the drop. The Wall Street Journal also posits that this could be the first in a series of price war moves in the single purpose e-reader market which are now facing competition from multi-purpose devices such as the aforementioned iPad and the recently announced Kindle app for tablets.

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Sony's PSP turns 5, may very well live forever

It's somewhat hard to believe that Sony as a whole turned 60 just under 4 years ago, and since then we've seen the PlayStation turn 15, the PlayStation 2 turn 10 and the PlayStation 3 celebrate its first. Today, the outfit's PlayStation Portable (or PSP, in shorter terms) is gettin' down on its fifth birthday (while our own bionic Thomas Ricker parties on his 482nd), with the North American debut happening on March 24, 2005. To date, over 17 million of the iconic handhelds have been sold, over 820 titles have been created for it and an all-new, UMD-free version has come along to dazzle those who are champing at the bit to ditch physical media. The platform as a whole still has aways to go before it catches the Big N and its Game Boy / DS line, but hey, the millennium is young.

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Sony VAIO M and its Atom N450 heart get unboxed

Sony's successor to the VAIO W netbook made its debut a little prematurely earlier this month, which has now been followed by its first unboxing and preview. Encased in an appealing matte black plastic, the VAIO M is set for an April launch in the UK at the very reasonable £300 ($456) price point. Unfortunately, the drop in price also means a lower-res 1024 x 600 display, while the W's chiclet keyboard has also been replaced with a more conventional typing surface. With 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a 250GB storage drive, Sony seems to be giving us the bare minimum here, but that's alright with us -- let's just make sure this thing actually has a battery that lasts, shall we Sony?

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Sony Ericsson answers your nagging X10 questions, 'newer version' of Android will come

While we all continue to twiddle our thumbs in anticipation of the X10's general availability, Dutch site Tweakers took some time out with Sony Ericsson's Jacob Sten Harold de Kort to get a few pressing questions from the community answered. It's quite a test -- de Kort fielded over 80 questions in all -- and there were a few big takeaways that should be of interest to anyone who's got even glancing interest in putting this thing in their pocket in the next few months. First off, it's still scheduled to launch with Android 1.6 Donut, but his words along with a post over on SE's official Product Blog give us hope that we'll be seeing 2.0, 2.1, or something even fresher down the road (to quote the post's headline, the phone "will be upgradeable"). 1.6 doesn't support multitouch in the framework, and indeed, de Kort confirms that the X10 will be a unitouch device, though it's not clear whether that could change with a newer firmware or if there's a hardware issue involved. As for pricing, we can expect this to launch for €599 (about $817) -- in Holland, anyhow, where it's on track to hit shelves before the end of the quarter. The subsidized pricing should hopefully be a tad less heart-stopping.

[Thanks, Len B. and Moody]

Update: The questions were actually fielded by Harold de Kort, marketing manager for Sony Ericsson in the Netherlands, not Jacob Sten. Thanks, domipost!

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Sony catches tablet fever, wants to be an 'active player'

Sony has long said it would cautiously approach the tablet market while it built up its Reader e-book line, but it looks like things are picking up a little steam: CFO Nobuyuki Oneda said the company is "very interested" in the tablet market during his post-earnings report news conference. Oneda said that Sony's "confident we have the skills to create a product," and that "Time-wise we are a little behind the iPad but it's a space we would like to be an active player in." We could certainly see a Sony device about the size of the Reader Daily Edition making a splash, especially if it's tied in with Sony's new push at a unified online experience -- and dare we hope for tablet remix of the Dash Internet Viewer (pictured above) based on the Chumby OS? Time will tell.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 gets its Vodafone spotlight at long last

There'd been some drama not long ago on news that Vodafone was scrubbing its exclusive launch of Sony Ericsson's troubled Xperia X2, but it turns out they still wanted a crack at the thing after all -- just not in the UK, apparently, where it had originally been listed as "coming soon." Instead, it's Voda's Spanish outpost that's taking a crack at the phone, which features WinMo 6.5 (you might recall that this thing was announced way back around the time of 6.5's release) alongside a WVGA AMOLED display, 8.1 megapixel camera, and full QWERTY keyboard -- not bad on paper. Of course, at the €700 ($957) they're charging sans contract, you're probably going to want to sign your name on the dotted line if you plan on picking it up.

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Sony Ericsson's eco-loving Naite now available from Sony Style

Following availability on Rogers by just a handful of days, Sony Ericsson is now talking up availability of the simple Naite candybar down south of the border -- but it's not through a carrier this time. Instead, you'll need to stroll into your local Sony Style store (or order online) to get it unlocked and unsubsidized. Oftentimes that's a brutal situation financially, but seeing how the Naite is a rather low-end device, these guys are charging just $159 for the privilege of using a device touting a case made of 50 percent post-consumer recycled plastic and an ultra-eco charger. It's available right now -- a good backup phone, perhaps?

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Keepin' it real fake, part CCLVIII: shanzhai PSP Phone dampens our excitement for an actual PSP Phone

When one thinks of a PSP Phone, they usually imagine a handset with a number of cool, gamer-centric features, such as some sort of integration with the PlayStation network or -- imagine! -- the ability to actually play PSP games. What they don't imagine -- correct us if we're wrong -- is some sort of KIRFy cellphone shoved inside what is essentially the shell of a PSP. That said, we do have to give our friends in Shenzhen some props: not only have they beat Sony with this knock-off, but with the way things are going, they might have the PSP Phone market all to themselves in perpetuity. No specifics on this one yet -- price, stats, or street date -- but you probably weren't going to buy one anyways. Get a closer look after the break.

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Sony Ericsson promises Satio software update 'just around the corner'

Following a December firmware boost, users of Sony Ericsson's much-maligned Satio should start gearing up for another significant update that -- at a glance, anyway -- brings some pretty awesome new features to the table. On top of a promise that it'll "rectify some issues, [and] optimize performance even further," Sony Ericsson's high-end Symbian set gets WVGA video recording (though VGA remains the default), integrated picture uploads to Facebook and videos to YouTube, DLNA support, sundry "UI improvements," and firmware integration of the Facebook app that's already available on PlayNow. Not bad for a phone that Sony Ericsson could've easily abandoned in favor of support for the Vivaz -- but probably not enough to totally shake the phone's tarnished rep this far into the game.

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