By Karl-Johan Dahlström
25th January 2012. 16:30
Category Archives: Blog
As part of our continuing efforts towards openness and knowledge sharing, we are now stepping up our open source activities. For a long time, we have been one of the major contributors to the Android Open Source Project. We’ve also been active in the open developer community where we most notably published an ICS alpha release a couple of months ago. And now, we’re excited to release a couple of new open source projects that are available on our GitHub. As you can see below, we have just now released two very interesting projects as open source: the analysis tool ChkBugReport, and our WebGL implementation for Android™ 4.0.
This way, we would like to continue to be transparent, share our knowledge, and get external developer contributions to make the tools even better. On our GitHub, you can also find our Web SDK project we published a while back, and a project called DrmLicenseService, which we will tell more about soon. Stay tuned for more information about open source projects going forward!
Heard of GLONASS? It’s a Russian radio-based satellite navigation system that both complements and provides an alternative to GPS. GLONASS is fully supported in Xperia S and Xperia ion, and any Xperia™ device with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 or S3 processor and the latest software is capable of supporting GLONASS! In this article, Magnus Persson from Sony Ericsson explains more about how GLONASS improves positioning and how you can incorporate this feature into your own apps. Read more after the jump.
JAN 24 Note: The list of GLONASS-supported Xperia phones has been updated below!*
When we announced the Xperia™ S the other day (and the Xperia™ ion on the US market), it also meant we added new devices to the family of Xperia™ phones supporting ANT+. ANT+ is a wireless personal network protocol mainly designed for gathering and transfer of sensor data, and it has become especially popular within the sports and health industry. Yesterday Dynastream (the company behind ANT+) announced an ANT+ emulator for Android™, which means it is now possible to develop ANT+ apps using just the Android™ device emulator, and an ANT USB stick plugged into a PC. Find out more after the jump!
For illustrative purposes only. Not for commercial use or re-sale. Use of “Sony” brand subject to regulatory approval.
A few days ago we announced the Xperia™ ion, our first LTE smartphone, for the U.S. market. But what benefits does LTE really add? When will it come to the rest of the world? And what are the LTE-related specs for Xperia™ ion? In this article, we will introduce LTE and share some important facts about Xperia™ ion, and provide useful links where you can dig deeper into LTE. Find out the full story after the jump.
For illustrative purposes only. Not for commercial use or re-sale. Use of “Sony” brand subject to regulatory approval.
Yesterday we announced the new Xperia™ S and the Xperia™ SmartTags, as well as the Xperia™ ion for the US market. This marks an exciting new era, as these are the first Xperia™ devices supporting NFC. But what is really NFC? Surely you’ve heard about it, and know it’s expected to be widely used in the future. But how does it work, and how will it be used? In this article, you will get to know more about the technology, some of the use cases and how we will work with NFC initially.
Are you planning to go to CES and the AT&T Developer Summit in Las Vegas next week? In that case, don’t miss the Sony Ericsson booth, where you can meet representatives from the Developer World team. Our staff will include business managers, developers, and developer marketing managers. So if you want to discuss partnerships, technical issues or communication activities for developers, feel free to stop by and have a chat with us! We will also demonstrate all the latest and greatest products.
Last week we made an Ice Cream Sandwich alpha ROM available for unlocked Xperia™ phones. The response we got was overwhelming, and we want to say a big thank you for all your great feedback and the huge interest shown! We will look through all the comments we received in the survey, on the blog post and on the video, and incorporate the input into our planning of future software and product releases. We have now also made the open source archive for the Ice Cream Sandwich alpha ROM available. In addition, the sensor HAL will also be available as open source soon.
Our friends at design3 posted an interesting blog post the other day, including a great introduction on how to create games for Xperia™ PLAY using the Unity engine. If you are considering to create a game adapted to the unique Xperia™ PLAY hardware features, the Unity engine is a real good game development tool to use, considering all the features that comes with it (including the option to use the visual editor, javascript or C#, and the full support of both 2D and 3D art).
Head over to the design3 blog post to read more more about it! design3 is one of the leading game development portals in the industry. You can find hundreds of hours of video tutorials on game engine, 3D tools, 2D tools, and much more on their website. For more information about Xperia™ PLAY game development, check out our game development section.
The other day we updated the texts and instructions on our unlock boot loader site, available at unlockbootloader.sonyericsson.com. The biggest change? Now there is a way for you to check if it’s possible to unlock your phone or not, before even starting the unlock process, by accessing the service menu on your phone.
Read more about the rest of the changes after the jump.
Do you work in a large building or in a complex of buildings? Are you new to work and having a hard time finding your way around? Are your colleagues or visitors ever late for your meetings because they couldn’t find the right conference room? If so, then it might be a good idea to setup an indoor map service. At Sony Ericsson, that is precisely what Magnus Persson and his colleagues have done. Read the rest of the story to find out why indoor maps are useful, and how to get started in creating your very own indoor map.
