Maurizio Pesce/WIRED
Maurizio Pesce/WIRED
Maurizio Pesce/WIRED
Maurizio Pesce/WIRED
Maurizio Pesce/WIRED
BERLIN, Germany—Today at the IFA Berlin consumer electronics show, Sony Mobile unveiled a small fleet of products running Android: a pair of Xperia smartphones, an 8-inch Xperia tablet, an Android Wear smart watch, and a new activity-tracking wearable called the SmartBand Talk.
Sony has turned out excellent Android hardware under its Xperia product line for the last few years. The Xperia devices have always impressed with their build quality and their forward-looking features like ruggedizing and waterproofing. But they’ve failed to earn Sony a spot among the biggest names in Android devices—Samsung and HTC still command the most attention from consumers.
Among all the Xperia devices announced here today, the Z3 Tablet Compact is the most impressive device. The older Z2 tablet, which was already quite light, has been updated and is now slimmer and lighter, mostly thanks to the display having been reduced from 10.1 to 8 inches.
It’s remarkably sleek. The body is just 0.25 inches thick and weights 0.61 pounds. The display is still a trilumious LED panel with 1920 x 1200 resolution. Packed inside, you’ll find a 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor, 3GB of RAM, and a Qualcomm Adreno 330 GPU. A notably huge 4500mAh battery gives you 13 hours of HD video playback, according to Sony’s claims, and its aided by a “Stamina” mode that disables all the less-important background functions to squeeze for life out of the cell. There’s an 8.1-megapixel camera on the rear that can shoot up to 1080p video, while a 2.2-megapixel 720p camera can be found on front, just like the old models. The back of the tablet is made of an anti-scratch polycarbonate, and it comes in either black or white. It will hit shelves in the fall in both LTE and Wi-Fi-only versions. No pricing was announced today.
In addition to refreshing its Xperia tablet, Sony also updated its two top-tier Xperia smartphones. The Xperia Z3 is Sony’s flagship smartphone, a big-screen 5.2-incher, and the Xperia Z3 Compact is the more modestly sized 4.6-incher. Both have seen some improvements since the previous Z2 phones models. Most importantly, while the flagship Z2 was never available to U.S. customers (no stateside carriers picked it up), T-Mobile has announced it will sell the LTE-capable Xperia Z3 in the U.S. when it becomes available worldwide at the end of the year.
The Z3 phones improve on the already excellent Z2 devices by scraping away some girth and weight from the glass and aluminium cases. The Z3 is now 0.28 inches thick and 0.33 pounds, and the the Xperia Z3 Compact is 0.34 inches and 0.28 pounds. The front and rear are still glass, with translucent polycarbonate along the edges. The Z3′s 5.2-inch LED display has a resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels, and the Z3 Compact’s 4.6-inch LED runs at 1280 x 720 resolution. They also have different batteries: the Xperia Z3 features a huge 3000 mAh battery, while the smaller Z3 Compact has a still 2600 mAh battery.
Other than that, the two smartphones are stuffed with the very same components. A massive 20.7-megapixel camera on the back with Sony’s G 25-millimeter lens, the first smartphone lens to advertise a light sensitivity of 12800 ISO. Both phones can shoot 4K 2160p video at 30fps, and the 2.2-megapixel front camera to shoot 720p video at 30 fps. Inside the phones have the same CPU and RAM as Sony’s Xperia Tablet—a 2.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor and 3GB of memory. The big version will come in black, white, and copper, while the smaller Compact also comes in “Silver Green.”
Both phones (and the tablet, for that matter) are waterproof and dustproof. Though Sony was very early to the waterproofing trend with its previous Xperia devices, the practice appears to be spreading to other manufacturers’ top-tier products now. It’s a good thing.
All the three devices can run PS4 Remote Play, a new feature that was formerly available only on PS Vita. The Remote Play feature lets users play most PS4 games on the Z3 devices via a wireless connection using a special Dualshock 4 controller with a Game Control Mount—you can hook the Xperia device onto the mount and move from the couch to keep playing your game as you walk around from the toilet (wash your hands!) to the kitchen to the bed.
Because these are Android devices, there are some unique tricks Sony has baked into the software. All of the Z3s have something called Multicamera, a trick that connects up to four different devices to shoot or record a scene from different angles on a split screen. There’s also a “High-Resolution Audio” setting for when you’re listening to MP3s or AACs. It supposedly boosts the audio quality of your files, and it works for songs in your library or even those in Sony’s Music Unlimited cloud-based service.
Step Over to the Wearables
Sony’s new SmartWatch 3 is the company’s first Android Wear product. Sony had previously said it would develop its own watch software, but the company has reconsidered and loaded the device up with Google’s Android-based operating system for wearables. The SmartWatch 3 has a built-in microphone, accelerometer, compass, gyroscope, and GPS sensor, as well as 4GB of storage to store music files and tracked data. The microphone means you get Google Now interactivity, and the storage for music files mean you can play back music over Bluetooth while you sweat all over the thing (yes, it’s waterproof). The face is a 1.6-inch (320×320 pixel) LCD display. The rest of the watch is mostly silicone, save for the metal clasp and the stainless steel back panel where you’ll find a microUSB charge port. There’s no dock for charging, an advantage over other Android Wear watches. The watch will be on sale soon for about $300 (230 euro) and the interchangeable straps come in four colors: black, white, pink, and bright green.
Finally, Sony showed off a new, updated wearable for what it calls “lifelogging.” Just like Sony’s first SmartBand unveiled at CES in January, the new SmartBand Talk tracks you daily physical activity—steps, distance, calories, and the like. This latest device has built-in accelerometer and altimeter to better feel your moves and to give you more accurate data in its LifeLog application. The “Talk” in SmartBand Talk comes from the built-in microphone and speaker, so you can take phone calls without reaching for your phone. For a display, you get an always-on 1.4-inche e-paper screen that shows notifications and (of course) the time. It will cost around $200 (160 euro) when it goes on sale this fall. Like other wearables, it has microUSB and Bluetooth capabilities.
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