Xperiancers

Xperia Certification Program

// March 27th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, DEVELOPERS, PANELS, X1 NEWS, XPERIA X1

Introducing Xperia Certification Program, specifically for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 phone.

It is designed to set highest standard for your applications and allows you to use the “Certified for Xperia X1″ logo in your marketing materials.

As a part of the program, Xperia Panel Certification is the process of certifying that your Xperia Panel has passed performance and quality assurance tests, fulfilling the requirements according to Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Panels certification requirements.

Completing this new Certification Program and having your Panel certified allows you to participate in any Sony Ericsson promotional activity and to use the “Certified for Xperia X1″ logo in your marketing materials, amongst other.

For more information visit Xperia Certification Program page.

Vildan

SPB Traveller and Weather panels available to download now

// March 26th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // PANELS

The first paid Xperia Panels are now available to download from the fun and downloads section of the Sony Ericsson website.

The new weather and traveller panels are both produced by SPB software, the same company which produced the free SPB shell.

I would spend the next few paragraph explaining what they do but the guys over at pocketnow.com have beaten me to it with a video review. We posted about the traveller panel when it won the panels category in the 2008 content awards.

The two panels cost $29.95 (for traveller) and $19.95 (for weather.)

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.

Evernote panel now live

// March 11th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // PANELS

The new evernote panel (we talked about it back when we announced the content awards winners) is now available to download for free from the Sony Ericsson website. Check out the video above to see how it (Evernote, not the panel) works. There are a few new panels going live in the coming weeks and we’ll be posting reviews of them here.

If there’s anything in particular you want to know about the panels please leave questions in the comments and I’ll get some answers from the developers.

New version of Panels SDK available with open GL ES support

// February 24th, 2009 // 7 Comments » // DEVELOPERS, PANELS

The title says it all really. The latest beta version of the Panels SDK has been released, and is available now to download free from the Sony Ericsson developer portal.

The new beta includes Open GL ES support and allows you to access the internal hardware graphics acceleration on the X1.

If you’re a developer with any questions drop me an email and I’ll put you in touch with the right people at Sony Ericsson.

4 new panels announced today at MWC

// February 16th, 2009 // 8 Comments » // PANELS, X1 NEWS

We’ve got 4 new panels – Skype, CNN, On the road, and Mytopia, coming to the X1. They are being unveiled today at MWC and after a period of testing should be available for download on the /fun section of the Sony Ericsson website. So what do they do?

Skype: See at a glance which of your contacts are online, easily call or instant message them in “just a couple of clicks,” and as far as I can tell from the pre-release material, there’ll also be some kind of graphical customisation using evening, daylight, or event based effects.

CNN: Live news sport and weather direct to your phone and access to i-report (CNN’s citizen journalism tool.) You can browse news by category, tell it what you’re interested in and get it to send you local news based on your phone’s location

On the road: a driving panel. gives you big touch buttons and simplifies call handling / media streaming / GPS tools.

Mytopia: Gives you access to the online bingo and poker games on mytopia.com

These will all be made available for download as well as all the shortlisted entries to the content awards.

I’ll update this as soon as I have more information, pics etc…

Sam

UPDATE: image courtesy of omio – also worth checking out there is a video of the CNN panel in action

SPB Traveler wins panels competition

// February 9th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // PANELS, X1 NEWS

Sony Ericsson announced the winners of their content awards for 2008 this morning. You can see all the other winners on the content awards site but the prize for the best new Xperia panel went to SPB software for the SPB traveler panel.

The panel uses the internet connection and the GPS on the X1 to provide you with a number of useful travelling tools including a currency convertor, flight search, multi time zone diary and a phrasebook. For more information check out SPB’s website.

Update:

The nominees were:

Evernote

Ping.fm

Mobisystems (English to Japanese dictionary)

PlusFourSix (for their work on 3 sweden’s operator panel)

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.

New version of the X1 white paper

// November 21st, 2008 // 5 Comments » // CAMERA, DEVELOPERS, DISPLAY, PANELS, TOUCHSCREEN, XPERIA X1

For those of you with technical questions regarding the X1, the new version of the X1 white paper is up on the Sony Ericsson developer site. 37 pages of X1 related goodness.

Sam

Spb Software releases Xperia panel screen shots

// October 23rd, 2008 // 11 Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, PANELS, X1 NEWS

The guys over at Spb have released the first full version of their Spb Mobile Shell panel. The official announcement is here. Importantly, they’ve also released a number of screen shots to show you all how it looks. (the pics are on our images page but if you don’t have the required flash player check out our flickr stream)

I’ve just installed my version and, as someone who hasn’t used Spb much before, I’m mightily impressed. It’s quick to load, easy to operate, it looks great and it’s free – so it ticks all the boxes as far as I’m concerned.

You can download it here from the Sony Ericsson site.

Update: pocket pc thoughts is also covering this, read more here.

Update 2: Just had an email from Yaroslav Goncharov, the product manager for Spb Mobile Shell. In his words:

“Spb Mobile Shell is a means to a de-cluttered device and finger-friendly menus and an immensely popular program. We think that the custom Spb Mobile Shell panel goes especially well with the Xperia X1. The Panels interface feels like it was created with the developers in mind, from the start. It was a very good decision to reuse the standard interface of Today Plug-ins, which makes for a comfortable application migration, taking up minimum resources and leading to a good ROI in development. The panels are absolutely an exceptional opportunity for developers, especially taking into account the X1’s on-device portal, which will help to further promote quality Windows Mobile software in this competitive market.”