Xperiancers

New Xperia Panels on the way

// March 24th, 2009 // 10 Comments » // FEATURED, PANELS, XPERIA X1

The guys over at pocketnow.com have posted a review of the beta versions of the 4 new panels (announced back in feb at MWC.) Not sure they installed 100% properly as the Skype one certainly did more on my X1 when I was testing it. I know a few other bloggers have beta versions for feedback so I’ll update this if / when they post anything.

Also, I noted (thanks to the Xperiancer blog) that there are a couple of new 3rd party panels knocking about.

Wakoopa is a software focussed social network. The panel was built by a guy who goes by the name of Chopinfreak over at XDA developers. I’ve not yet installed it but will up date with my thoughts when I have.

The other panel is really quite cool, it’s similar in some ways to the goldfish panel that ships with the phone but is more interactive and has more functionality. It’s called “Growing” and seems to use some kind of flash. The instructions to install it are a little complicated (well, you need to install 2 cabs) and links to them both can be found here.

If anyone stumbles across any more panels leave a link in the comments and I’ll update this.

New Point UI Xperia panel – beta available for free now

// February 12th, 2009 // 13 Comments » // FEATURED

The guys over at PointUI have just released the beta version of their new home-2 software.

I only installed it this morning but I’ve already been won over. It is intuitively laid out, easy to navigate and slickly rendered. The beta has quite limited functionality but it’s a great taster of what’s to come when they release the pro version, and perfectly useable in it’s own right. It’s free and available for download in panel form from the products section of the PointUI website.

feel free to leave any feedback re: the Xperia panel in the comments, we’ll collate it and get it back to PointUI.

Facebook Demo Video

// November 30th, 2008 // 16 Comments » // FEATURED, PANELS, XPERIA X1

As promised, here is the video demo of the new facebook panel. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and we’ll do what we can to answer them. Enjoy.

X1 demonstration video

// October 7th, 2008 // 58 Comments » // CAMERA, DISPLAY, FEATURED, PANELS, TOUCHSCREEN, XPERIA X1

We at Wolfstar finally got our hands on our very own Xperia X1 on Monday, I used it for a couple of hours then recorded this video, (it’s the first one I’ve done and despite the fact that I was in a room on my own, it was still a surprisingly nervy experience.) If you have any questions, or you want any other features of the phone demonstrating in more detail, leave it in the comments and I’ll do another video in the next couple of days.

Thanks, Sam

Your Xperia Questions Answered

// September 26th, 2008 // 192 Comments » // FEATURED, XPERIA X1

This blog is coming up to being two weeks old and we’ve received a fair few questions in the comments sections. Yesterday I went through the questions with Ramanath and we sorted out answers to those which are most commonly asked. So here goes:

• Launch dates / networks etc… It’s really not up to us to say which networks will be carrying the phone and when. They all have their own business plans and their own plans for the launch etc…. so we’re not going to get involved in speculation as to who will carry it and when. The launch date of the 30th is the day we ship the phones to the networks and there will, most likely be some lead time before it appears. (though I’d expect to see it on some shelves in early October.)

• Is there an accelerometer? No.

• Will there be 30 fps video recording? Yes ,as promised.

• Will there be one or two versions of the phone? There will be two versions, one for the US and one for everyone else.

• Is there any difference between the black and silver versions of the phone? Yes, one is black, the other is silver. Other than that, no they are the same phone.

• How big is the battery and how long does it last? The battery is a 1500mAh unit (about 10% bigger than, for example, the touch pro). How long it lasts depends very much on how much you use the phone. Even in the worst case scenario, with all the features turned on (GPS, internet, applications etc…) and heavy usage, it will last all day and need to be charged over night.

• Questions re: the speed etc… The device has a graphics accelerator, a 528 Mhz processor and 384 megs of ram (so it should be as fast as anything else that is out there.)

That’s it for the moment, keep the questions coming and we’ll keep trying to answer them. We should also take this opportunity to thank all of you who have been involved so far. Since we launched on the 15th we’ve had more than 9,000 unique visitors and 28,000 page views (which is more than we hoped for). The opportunity to engage in a conversation with all of you is hugely important to us and we genuinely appreciate your involvement in the site.

Thanks again,

Sam Oakley and Ramanath Bhat

Project Hercules

// September 23rd, 2008 // 25 Comments » // FEATURED

Many people have asked me about the battery consumption on the XPERIA X1. Fair question I think, what is a user experience without power?

Sony Ericsson noted this from the beginning in the X1 development, and therefore we had a special project to work on a new battery. Project name: Hercules (and I think it’s evident where the name comes from).
The battery in the X1 is 1500mAh, which is a large battery.

This topic is very tricky, since he phone in itself has many great features, but they consume a lot of power (a-GPS, WiFi, a large screen etc etc). Nevertheless, this is a really important area and I would therefore like to raise it. I use the phone daily – a lot! – and I usually charge it over night.

Magnus

Total Multimedia

// September 16th, 2008 // 12 Comments » // DISPLAY, FEATURED, XPERIA X1

As a product planner for X1, multimedia always meant high quality, nice screen, good playback horse power, easy ui …this comes from my years of working at Sony (our parent).

So when I started X1 planning I wanted to deliver the best in class multimedia to our consumers. The high end chipset in X1 allows for DVD quality playback of movies and some of our preinstalled contents show case that. 3D chip from ATI in the phone makes it a good platform for high end games. excellent support for music with cool BT speaker accessory. Great camera UI to capture high quality pics and movies and crisp screen to view those recorded memories.

All in all X1 qualifies itself as the best multimedia phone in the market today. The Media Xperience panel UI (similar to PS3 and Bravia) empowers the user to have the best in class Media experience with the touch of the screen.

–Ramanath@ Caltrain on the way back from work (9 pm)

Welcome

// September 9th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // FEATURED, X1 EVENTS, X1 NEWS, XPERIA X1

Hi, welcome to Xperiancers.com, the Xperia blogger’s centre. We’ve created it so that Sony Ericsson can start to understand and engage in all of the conversations that are already happening about the Xperia.

It’s fair to say that up until now, apart from with the developer community, we’ve not done a great job of listening to and talking with the wider blogging community. This is our first step in changing all that. We’ve been inspired by some of the great initiatives by other companies, but this is very much our own idea and we hope we’ve learnt from what others have done.

To help us we’ve taken on Wolfstar, a public relations company that specialises in social media. Now I know that will worry some of you, but I promise it shouldn’t. This site absolutely isn’t about old-fashioned spin and marketing. It’s a genuine initiative to improve the two-way conversation between Sony Ericsson and you, our customers. Wolfstar are going to help us do that.

The reason that we’ve decided to focus on the Xperia is that we think it is such an exciting and powerful new handset and its already had an amazing amount of buzz and attention.

You’ll be hearing from lots of different people over the next few days and weeks. This post is a joint effort by Merran Wrigley (a senior corporate global PR bod at Sony Ericsson) and Stuart Bruce (the managing director of Wolfstar) and we’ll both be authors. Other authors will include several members of Sony Ericsson’s development team, as well as people from Wolfstar.

We’ve got lots of exciting news and ideas to talk about, so please subscribe to our feed and use the comments to let us know what you think.

Merran Wrigley and Stuart Bruce