This week is Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and that means almost all of Apple’s biggest competitors are getting together to show off their latest phones, tablets, and other gadgets. Yesterday was the official press day, so let’s take a look at all the devices that were announced by Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei and others…
Sony XAV-AX100 is the company’s first aftermarket receiver that works with Apple CarPlay. Priced competitively at $499, XAV-AX100 features a 6.4-inch resistive touch display that rivals larger capacitive touch screens in quality. Sony has also integrated CarPlay in better ways than other aftermarket receivers available so far. Read on for our full review…
Sony announced back in August that it was entering the CarPlay display scene with its $499 6.4-inch XAV-AX100 receiver, and starting today you can buy the sleek aftermarket screen for yourself.
Sony’s web TV service PlayStation Vue is now available on the fourth generation Apple TV. Previously, PS Vue customers could authenticate paid video apps with Sony credentials, but access to live channel streaming was limited.
Sony’s a6300 is one of the Japanese company’s most recently released cameras and is the successor to the very popular a6000. The camera has already received a ton of praise — Jeff took it for a test drive the other week, and enjoyed its 4K shooting abilities.
One common complaint, however, is the lack of a selfie screen on the a6300. Sony missed a big opportunity by not including a built-in way for vloggers to view themselves while on camera.
The solution? Use your iPhone as a digital viewfinder. Not only will such a setup work with the a6300, but it’ll work with other digital cameras that support such functionality.
The iPhone can shoot 4K video, and now even the iPad can shoot 4K video. Yet, there are times when you need the flexibility and power provided by a standalone camera.
Standalone cameras have inherent advantages over smartphone cameras, despite the major strides made by iPhone photography over the last few years. Even with amazing third-party apps like FiLMiC Pro, which lets you adjust things like ISO and shutter speed, you’re still stuck with a constant aperture and fixed lens.
While smartphones have replaced point and shoot cameras for a vast amount of people, standalone cameras, especially ones with interchangeable lenses like the recently-released 24MP Sony a6300, still have their place.
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Apple’s decline in iPhone sales is unsurprisingly having a knock-on effect on its key suppliers, with the WSJ reporting that Foxconn, Pegatron, Sharp, Japan Display and Sony have all reported falling profits or losses as a result.
Sony Corporation has issued an official news release in regards to the status of their manufacturing companies in Japan after the Kumamoto earthquakes. Having confirmed the safety of their employees in the affected regions, Sony has listed out a few details of the manufacturing sites that have been impacted as result of the earthquake.
If you’ve been holding out since last November when we first learned that Sony had plans to let gamers play PS4 titles on Mac, your time has finally (almost) arrived. Sony has already tested the 3.50 update with PS4 owners trying the beta although the pre-release version lacked Remote Play for Mac, but tomorrow that feature will be included in the public release for all PlayStation 4 owners.
It’s 2016, billions of smartphones are in use across the globe, and traditional video game companies are only just coming around to the idea that there’s some money to be made from smartphone gaming. Nintendo only recently launched its first mobile app, and plans to release a more familiar character-based game soon. Sony, likewise is about to make another foray in to the world of smartphone-based gaming with its newly-formed corporation, ForwardWorks.
Sony told us back in November that it would be offering Remote Play on both Mac and PC, allowing PlayStation 4 owners to stream games to their Macs, but it didn’t give any clue as to when this would be available. It still hasn’t given a definite date, but today confirmed that it will be coming in the next major update, v3.50.
It’s Mobile World Congress this week in Barcelona, which means most of Apple’s competitors are unveiling their upcoming smartphone lineups that will inevitably compete with Apple’s own 2016 lineup.
But while we usually have to wait until the fall for a new iPhone from Apple, this year is different in that Apple’s event planned for early next month will likely see it unveil the much anticipated iPhone 5se, a rare non-flagship and mid-year iPhone upgrade that will be a low to mid-tier smartphone competitor at pricing that will take over the current iPhone 5s lineup around $450 off contract.
Among the announcements: Samsung has officially announced its Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones — both with a similar premium metal and glass design as previous generations but with upgraded internals — while LG showed off its all-new metal modular design for its new flagship LG G5. Also on show this week is a new smartphone flagship from Acer that offers an impressive 1TB of hybrid local/cloud storage, HTC’s One X9, and a trio of Xperia X smartphones from Sony, two with high camera specs including predictive focus.
With the iPhone 7 Plus expected to utilize a dual-lens system for optical zoom, a new quote has emerged from Sony Corporation’s CFO discussing the future of dual-camera systems. In response to a question during their Q3 2015’s earnings call (via Xperia Blog), Sony Corporation’s Kenichiro Yoshida stated that “the takeoff of smartphone[s] with dual lens camera[s] will be in the year of 2017.” These comments add weight to claims that Apple has been testing iPhone 7 models with two cameras including KGI’s report that iPhone 7 Plus models will feature a dual-camera system.
If you own a PS4 but end up fighting for access to the big TV when other family members want to use it for watching TV shows or movies, Sony is working on an app for that. Sony’s president of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida tweeted that the company is working on an app to stream games to both PCs and Mac.
Some people asked if we plan to provide Remote Play function to PC, and yes, we are indeed working on an official application for PC/Mac. :D
— Shuhei Yoshida (@yosp) November 27, 2015
The games console already has Remote Play functionality built in, but it’s of very limited use as yet …
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Writing in his column in The Verge, Walt Mossberg – who says he spent “scores of hours” in conversation with Steve Jobs across 14 years – says that the man depicted in the Sorkin/Boyle movie is not the Steve Jobs he knew.
Steve Jobs wasn’t perfect. He was difficult. He was unnecessarily rude and brusque at times. He lied. But he also mellowed and grew as a person, and that mellowing coincided with the best part of his career. Mr. Sorkin opts to hide all of that from his audience. The best of the real Steve Jobs begins to unfold just as Steve Jobs ends.
A lengthy piece in Hollywood Reporter earlier this month – leaning heavily on emails leaked from the Sony hack – provides a lot of insight into what was going on behind the scenes in the run up to the making of the movie. This included the fact that Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures, knew from the start that the project was going to be challenging …
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I knew Celluon had something special on its hands when I reviewed the $349 pocket-sized video projector PicoPro earlier this year: the Korean company known for laser-projecting keyboards released an iPhone 6 Plus-sized HD projector, capable of simulating a TV using lasers, a speaker, and a rechargeable battery. PicoPro’s projection system was MicroVision-developed and laser-sharp, requiring no manual focus knob — an advantage over rival projectors such as the otherwise more powerful AAXA P700 and ST200, which I subsequently reviewed and liked.
This week, Sony is entering the pico projector market with MP-CL1 ($350), which uses the same MicroVision laser projector found in PicoPro. Sporting the same 1920×720 resolution and putative 32-lumen brightness/80,000:1 contrast ratio as PicoPro, MP-CL1 promises to create a 40-inch TV image at 4-foot distances, an 80-inch image at 8-foot distances, or a (very dim) 120-inch image at 12-foot distances. Sony has pitched it as a “take it anywhere” big screen display for the iPad, iPhone, and PlayStation 4; it’s equally viable for Apple TVs and HDMI-ready Macs. So which is the better value: MP-CL1 or PicoPro?…
While some were waiting eagerly for the Apple Watch, and others got assimilated, there are still those who prefer traditional watches. That’s the market Sony hopes to appeal to with a new hybrid watch called Wena (which apparently stands for ‘wear electronics naturally’), which it’s pitching on its Japanese crowdfunding site First Flight.
It’s mostly a traditional analogue watch, but a link to an iOS app gives it limited smartwatch functionality. On the smartwatch side, you get fitness band functionality, and notifications are echoed to the watch in the form of an LED and vibration …
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One of the marquee upgrades to the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus will be a major revamp to the camera system. For the first time since the iPhone 4S launch in 2011, the iPhone camera’s megapixel count will be upgraded: Apple will be moving from the 8-megapixel sensor on the iPhone 6 to a custom imager billed as 12-megapixels in both of the new iPhones, according to sources. The 12-megapixel camera will mean that the new iPhones will be able to take larger, higher-resolution photos than before. Because of an upgraded image signal processor that comes as part of the new A9 system-on-a-chip, the new sensor will not wash out or otherwise decrease the quality of photos, according to sources.
As regular readers will know, it took a little while for the Apple Watch to really grow on me. But even back when I wasn’t convinced I needed a smartwatch, I still had to admire the design. And the Digital Crown was a large part of how Apple got the smartwatch right when others hadn’t yet cracked it. A fundamental problem with a small touchscreen is that touching it covers up much of the content. The Digital Crown overcomes that, allowing us to scroll content without our thumb getting in the way.
But while today’s iPhone screens may be larger than they used to be, they are still pretty small in the scheme of things. Scrolling with a thumb still covers up a chunk of the content. Worse, it’s easy to accidentally tap on targets accidentally including ads. There have been numerous occasions since using Apple Watch when my thumb started absent-mindedly reaching for the non-existent Digital Crown on my iPhone …
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The Belkin Charge and Sync Lightning dock is under $15 today + variety of colors!)http://t.co/5FlaqL0qIl pic.twitter.com/86GLsK2jQu
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According to a document leaked as part of WikiLeaks’ latest dump of information form the Sony Pictures hack, Apple has been testing and licensing 4K content from Sony since as early as 2013. The document is signed by Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of Internet Software and Services, and former Sony Pictures exec Jim Underwood (via AppleInsider)
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As the main headline events wrap up at this year’s E3, Square Enix dropped more information on its plans for the beloved Final Fantasy series. After a very impressive reveal for the Final Fantasy VII remake on consoles and PC at the Sony event last night, Square executive producer Shinji Hashimoto took to the stage today to announce that FF7 is coming to iOS devices this Summer.
To be clear, this isn’t a mobile version of the new remake, but rather a port of the now iconic original PlayStation release. Square Enix already has a wide selection of mobile titles available in the App Store including Final Fantasy 1 through 6.
No exact release date or pricing details have been given, but you can expect it in the coming months, and likely for a premium judging by Square’s other mobile offerings.
Head over to 9to5Toys for a complete rundown on everything Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and everyone else had to offer at E3 2015.
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