By Daniel Sandblom
7th July 2011.
14:15
Category Archives: sample videos
As you probably saw last week, Skype announced that Skype for Android now supports video calling. We have recorded a short video featuring Xperia neo and Xperia pro which are two out of only four phones supported on the initial release. I have to be honest that I haven’t used Skype video calling on a smartphone before, but it was surprisingly simple to make a call and the video quality was very good as well. In the video you also catch a glimpse of the use case with connecting an Xperia pro to a big screen TV. To manage expectations, you will not get this in HD quality even though you connect through the HDMI connector, but still, this basically turns your Xperia into a mobile video conferencing system to carry around in your pocket.
As we do quite a lot of phone calls across our company, and some of them last for a significant time, I once in a while miss the face to face meetings. So for next week I have set a personal target to replace at least 10 of my regular calls with video calls 
So another day here is over, we’ve met a lot of interesting people and new things happen all the time here. Tomorrow we hope to also be able to visit some of our partners and find more cool stuff to show you.
The pic above shows the Android with thumbs that you might have seen in our superbowl commercial about a week ago – he does look stunning in real “life”
Below is a video our colleague Nik shot last night. Apparently every night at closing time here at MWC they start up the big fountain outside our stand and have a show of lights and music. A nice ending to the day and something nice to show here since Nik shot it with his XperiaTM arc and it does show off some of its low-light abilities!
Good Night!
Now I’ve shot some videos of the pre-release software update that I have in my XPERIA X10. This is not the final release but we are really close to releasing the final candidates into external and operator testing and approval now. When that testing is ready and the candidates gets approved the roll-out will start. The current plan still holds to start the roll-out towards the end of October and onwards. (As mentioned earlier the roll-out is done gradually though so it will take some time before all different versions get the update.)
In these videos I try to show you both what the updated home screen looks like and also some results from HD video recording with continuous auto focus.
Remember that even though we are close to a final candidate this still is pre-release software so there might still be small changes and optimizations made before commercial release.
First video out is a short clip showing the home screen that now has 5 panes and some other nice additions such as 5 rows of icons instead of 4. I also show some new widgets that come with the update.
I also made these two videos to show the HD video result. The first one shows a more real life use case where I move the phone from filming a far away object to a much closer one.
In this second video I instead kept the X10 on the tripod and introduce a close object into the scene. This is more of a stress test and it does struggle a little bit in the first attempt but is much quicker in the second one.
There have been more requests from you on what you want me to show and I am working on it. If you have more requests just let me know in the comments section!
This video doesn’t include extreme skiing stunts or rock concert performances, but it still has a quite spectacular twist – it’s recorded with the very same phone we are talking about: the Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro. Vivaz pro shares the same multimedia and entertainment elements as its sister Vivaz (except the difference in megapixels), and with the full slide-out qwerty keyboard it’s ideal for the many aspects of messaging highlighted in the video clip.
So, should you go for a pure touch phone or one with a full slide-out qwerty keyboard? Well, I guess the choice is up to you and it is a matter of taste. I use Vivaz pro as my personal phone mainly because I feel that a physical keyboard is superior for handling my work and private emails and I’ve been addicted to having decent camera functionality ever since the first Cyber-shot phone. I’m a frequent user of Facebook but I’m more of a follower on Twitter than a contributor. When it comes to blogging, besides being active in the discussions with you on this blog, I mostly have blogs in time periods, usually for certain projects or travels.
We believe that there are as many types of ”messaging lifestyles” as there are users.
BTW, did you know that you can use the headset as a microphone when you are recording video on Vivaz and Vivaz pro? As I needed a slightly longer cable for this video sequence, I got a €14,90 clip-on mic from a discount electronic store. As you can hear in the video it does a great job given that I’m sitting in the middle of the open landscape at the Sony Ericsson office.
Daniel
Beauty comes from within. It’s not different with phones. Check out this video to catch a glimpse of the smart user interface, which has been optimised for compact screens. Navigation made easy single-handed.
You can see the Sony Ericsson Timescape signature application in use. It organises all communication in one place in an intuitive way, whether it’s text messages, Facebook updates, Twitter posts or missed calls. Like the UI also Timescape has been optimized for the compact screen. The supported services differ slightly from X10. X10 mini and X10 mini pro cover:
Facebook
• Status updates from friends
• Friend’s photo
• Inbox Message
• Friend Requests
Twitter
• Tweets from people user are following
• Tweet replies
• Direct message
SMS/MMS
• Incoming SMS and MMS messages
Phone calls
• Missed phone calls
If you click on a Facebook tile the browser is launched and X10 mini loads the Facebook.com website that corresponds to the message. By hitting the bottom left corner, you can write a new status update and then submit it to one or more services in Timescape (default are Facebook and Twitter).
If you click on a Twitter tile or press on a message in the infinite view the browser is launched and we load the Twitter.com website that corresponds to the message.
Enjoy watching!
