To localise custom ROMs for our most recent Xperia devices that have keyboards – Xperia™ pro or Xperia™ mini pro – you’ll need to ensure that the ROMs properly handle the physical keyboard corresponding to the country you wish to develop for. Below, you’ll find a list of keyboard mappings, by country, for the Xperia™ pro and Xperia™ mini pro. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment at the end of this post, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Arabic

Arabic keyboard layout.

The Arabic keyboard layout is the keyboard layout used for the Arabic languages. The keyboard contains both Arabic and Latin characters, since Latin characters are necessary for URLs and email addresses. 

AZERTY

AZERTY keyboard layout.

The AZERTY layout takes its name from the first six letters to appear on the first row of alphabetical keys. It is modelled on the English QWERTY layout, and is used most by French speakers based in Europe.

Bopomofo (Zhuyin)

Bopomofo keyboard layout.

The Bopomofo keyboard layout is often abbreviated as zhuyin and colloquially called bopomofo. The system consists of 37 characters and four tone marks, and makes it possible to transcribe all possible sounds in Mandarin.

Cyrillic

Cyrillic keyboard layout.

Danish/Norwegian

Danish/Norwegian keyboard layout.

The Danish/Norwegian keyboard layout includes dedicated keys for the letters Å/å, Æ/æ and Ø/ø.

Greek

Greek keyboard layout.

The Greek keyboard layout follows the U.S. layout for letters related to Latin letters (ABDEHIKLMNOPRSTXYZ), substitutes visually or phonetically similar letters (Φ at F; Γ at G) and uses the remaining slots for the remaining Greek letters: Ξ at J; Ψ at C; Ω at V; Θ at U).

Hebrew

Hebrew keyboard layout.

The Hebrew keyboard layout has both Hebrew and Latin letters. Since Hebrew is read and written right to left, as opposed to the left to right system in English, the cursor keys and delete keys work backwards when in left-to-right directionality mode.

Korean

Korean keyboard layout.

Korean is typed similarly to Western languages. Therefore, its layout (Dubeolsik) shares its symbol layout with the QWERTY keyboard. While Korean consonants and vowels (jamo) are grouped together into syllabic grids when written, the script is essentially alphabetical, and therefore typing in Korean is quite simple for those who understand the Korean alphabet Hangul. 

Latin (Xperia™ mini pro only)

Latin keyboard layout.

The Latin keyboard layout is the parent layout for QWERTY, QWERTZ and AZERTY. 

Portuguese/Catalan

Portuguese/Catalan keyboard layout.

The Portuguese/Catalan keyboard layout follows the QWERTY layout with the addition of the letter Ç, the only application of the cedilla in Portuguese, and which has its own key.

QWERTZ

QWERTZ keyboard layout.

The QWERTZ keyboard layout is mostly used in Germany and much of Central Europe. The name comes from the first six letters at the top left of the keyboard.

Stroke

Stroke keyboard layout.

The Stroke keyboard layout refers to strokes needed to form Chinese Hanzi characters currently in use in China, Japan and Korea. The method is widely installed in mobile phones with small screens because the method only requires five key taps for the 5,000 commonly used Chinese characters. It is also considered too tedious requiring a user to type out all the strokes constituting a single Chinese character.

Swedish/Finnish

Swedish/Finnish keyboard layout.

The central characteristics of the Swedish/Finish keyboard layout include the letters Å/å, Ä/ä, and Ö/ö.

Thai

Thai keyboard layout.

The Thai keyboard layout allows you to write Thai script. The less frequently used characters are accessed by the Shift key.

More information

• Get a description, technical details, and the white paper for Xperia pro.
• Get a description, technical details, and the white paper for Xperia mini pro.
• Find out about unlocking the boot loader for Xperia™ smartphones.

David Karlsson, Sony Ericsson software architect

Hi, I’m David Karlsson, a Sony Ericsson Software Architect. My work mainly involves giving architectural guidance and technical support to our development partners and third party vendors. One important developer topic that comes up frequently is how to reduce the APK file size of an app. Developers who are submitting apps to Android Market™ sometimes discover that their APK file exceeds 50 MB, the current upload size limit. But you don’t have to accept the APK file size as is. There are ways you can reduce your APK file size.

What is an APK file?

An APK is an Android application package file. Each Android application is compiled and packaged in a single file that includes all of the application’s code (.dex files), resources, assets, and manifest file. The APK file is basically a .zip file, so there’s no way of compressing its size any further.

Why you should consider keeping files as small as possible

Memory space on smartphones is often a competitive area, now that most users are storing music, video, messages are more, in addition to downloading apps. The smaller you make your APK, the better it is for the user, and that may be a deciding factor on whether to download your app, versus a similar app that takes up more phone memory.

Tips for reducing file size

Here are a number of recommendations for reducing static footprint. You can choose the ones that fit best for your own particular needs.

ProGuard

A tool for code shrinking, like ProGuard, will significantly reduce the static foot print. The tool is available at sourceforge. Note that it is very important to re-test all of the application after applying ProGuard since it may change the application behavior. As ProGuard replaces the application symbols, to make the code difficult to read, it is important that you retain the symbol mapping, so that you can translate a stack trace back to the original symbols if you have to investigate a crash in your application.

Removal of debug information

We recommend that you remove all debug-related functionality from the application. The application generally does not see or use this data, and the Android operating system does not require it to run the application. Hence, the debug information only wastes space, and should be removed.

To accomplish this, all debug related functionality must be enclosed in conditional blocks, like below:

static final debug = false;

if (debug) {

          Log.v(TAG, “Debug …”);

}

It is important that the debug flag is set at compile time (i.e. declared as static final) for the compiler to be able to completely remove all debug functionality. Creating your own debug method like the one shown below is not a good idea because the call to myDebugPrint() is not enclosed by a conditional block, which means that the compiler must retain information about myDebugPrint() in the calling class.

public void myDebugPrint() {

    if (Debug) {

              Log.v(TAG, “Debug …”);

    }

}

…

myDebugPrint()

…

Removal of debug symbols from native libraries

Using debug symbols makes sense if your application is still in development, and still requires debugging. But if debug symbols are still appearing when you compile a release build, and if you want to remove them, then we recommend that the Debug symbols be removed from native libraries (.so files). This is done using the arm-eabi-strip command, from the Android NDK.

Recommended media formats

If your application relies heavily on images, audio or video, another way you can reduce the APK size is by using certain media formats. We recommend that you use the following media formats for images, audio and video:

• Images: PNG or JPEG. Use PNGs; since it is a lossless format it is very suitable for textures and artwork as there will be no visual artefacts from the compression. If there are space constraints, use JPEGs or a combination of PNGs and JPEGs. A high quality JPEG image may work fine for large photo-realistic images, which the JPEG compression scheme is optimised for.
• Audio: AAC Audio is recommended for all audio resources. AAC achieves better compression at a given quality, compared to mp3 or Ogg Vorbis. Raw formats such as WAV should never be used. The common rational for using the WAV format is that decoding compressed audio streams usually means high latency at playback. However, Android provides the Sound Pool API which enables applications to use compressed audio streams without the penalty of high latency.
• Video: Use H264 AVC. Encode the video to a resolution no larger than the screen resolution of the target device (if known).

Optimise PNG sizes without losing quality

If you use PNG format, PNG images can be reduced in file size without losing quality. To do this, use a tool such as OptiPNG or PNGCrush. Both are great for reducing PNG file size while still ensuring image quality. PNGcrush is an open-source program that iterates over PNG filters and zlib (Deflate) parameters, compresses the image repeatedly using each parameter configuration, and chooses the configuration that yields the smallest compressed (IDAT) output. On the other hand, OptiPNG performs the trials entirely in memory, and writes only the final output file on the disk. Moreover, it offers multiple optimization presets to the user.

Use 9patch PNGs to scale your images

A 9patch png is a special format for PNG that can be used for backgrounds. Nine patch images are especially useful when designing buttons. Instead of defining a regular bitmap to be used as a background, a 9patch defines nine segments – for each of the four corners, the four edges, and the centre. (See illustration).

Segments defined for 9patch PNG.

When you use a 9patch image, the image is subject to the following conditions:

• The corner segments are never scaled.
• The edge segments are repeated along the edge of the in order to fill the edge between the corner segments.
• The centre segment is repeated to fill the centre of the background between the four edges.
• The illustration below shows two buttons. The background of each button is generated from the same 9patch.
  

  Example of buttons generated from the same 9patch file.

 A single 9patch PNG can be used to replace many background images, as it can scale to fill the size of the control. Equally, a single 9patch image can be used on all devices of the same dpi screen, removing the need for screen-dependent backgrounds.

Remove unused resources

Another potential group of space wasters to consider for removal from your APK file are unused resources in your res directory, such as unused layouts, drawables and colors. To detect unused resources in your APK which might be able to be removed, use the android-unused-resources tool. Android Unused Resources is a Java application that will scan your project for unused resources.

Avoid duplication

Making sure that your application doesn’t have duplicate functionality or duplicate assets is an obvious way to avoid having unnecessary files in your APK. It is important to understand which Android APIs you use, and the full functionality that each provides. It could be that one Android API is already doing the work of another API. Duplicated assets (strings, bitmaps etc) are also a waste of space, and can be easily avoided. To a lesser extent, duplicated code will also unnecessarily increase the size of the delivered binary.

***

If you have any questions on how to reduce APK file size, feel free to leave a comment and we’ll get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.

More information

• Read our developer tip about installing large APK files to the SD card.
• Read our developer tutorial on how to use multiple APK support.

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!

Pál Szász, Software developer at Sony Ericsson.

My name is Pál Szász and I’ve been a software developer at Sony Ericsson since 2006. For several years, I worked on software maintenance, and most of the time was spent on fixing bugs. When hunting down an error, any information we could get was potentially useful. Therefore, we started to look at the output of the “bugreport” tool, which is a huge, chaotic, text file.

To find the information we wanted in an easier way, we created a new analysis tool, ChkBugReport, which helps you parse the very condensed information into something much more readable. After using it within Sony Ericsson with good results, we now want to share this tool with all you Android developers out there. You can find the latest information in the ChkBugReport forum thread on the XDA Forum, which I will also follow to answer questions and pick up suggestions.

Get started right away
The ChkBugReport source code, and all the information on how to use it, is published at GitHub. To start using the tool, just download the file chkbugreport.jar from the Code/Downloads section, and put it somewhere on your computer.  You can find more information in the installation guide. Since it is published as open source, it is free for you to use and develop even further. Apart from sharing our knowledge, our goal is to work closer with you external developers. In this specific case, we want to convert this tool into the ultimate “Swiss army knife of bug-hunting”. We are happy to respond to any questions, feedback or contribution suggestions, which can be posted in the ChkBugReport forum thread on the XDA Forum.

It’s quite easy to use the tool:

• Create a bugreport (for example when you receive an ANR message) by executing adb shell bugreport > bugreport.txt
• Execute ChkBugReport: java –jar chkbugreport.jar bugreport.txt
• Open the “bugreport_out/index.html” in a browser.

Get to know the output of ChkBugReport
The bugreport file contains several sections, each of them being a copy of a file (for example /data/system/packages.xml), the output of an application (for example “top”) or the dump of a service (for example the dump of the window manager service).

ChkBugReport parses the file and as a first step it splits it in smaller files, one per section, so users can easily find the section they want to analyse. These sections will be saved in “bugreport_out/raw”, in case the user needs it.

As a second step, it executes a set of built-in plugins, which processes one or several of these sections. The output of the plugins is saved as separate chapters in the report, and together with the table-of-contents, is saved as a set of HTML files. By simply opening the “index.html” file in a browser, you can start analysing the content of the bugreport:

A screenshot from the main view of the ChkBugReport tool.

 The plugins can also detect some errors; for example, the system log analyser plugin will find the ANR report in the log. These errors are sorted by priority and are collected in a special chapter, called “Errors”, so that you can easily find them.

Also, each plugin can contribute snippets of information about each process in a common chapter, called “Processes”. This way, you can find all the information related to a certain process in one place (memory usage, system log and so on).

Currently, ChkBugReport has the following plugins implemented:

• BatteryInfoPlugin – extracts the battery usage information and draws a nice chart showing the draining speed.
• CpuFreqPlugin – shows which CPU frequencies are supported, and how much time they were used.
• SystemLogPlugin, MainLogPlugin and EventLogPlugin – these plugins parses the various logs and extract the following information:
  • Memory usage from GC (Garbage Collection) logs.
  • Database and ContentProvider access time statistics.
  • Process and service lifecycle charts.
  • Crashes and ANRs.
  • Configuration changes (for example, screen rotations).
  • Activity start-ups.
• FTracePlugin – if the FTRACE functionality is enabled in the kernel, the context switch tracer is selected, and the Android bugreport tool supports saving the trace buffer, this plugin will analyse the trace and create statistics and overview charts. For example, it will show which thread was running and how long it was waiting. It will also save the information in VCD format, so that you can analyse the trace with GtkWave.
• MemPlugin – extracts the memory usage from various sources (for example, the dump of the meminfo service, or the output of librank and procrank).
• StackTracePlugin – analyses the stack traces and can even detect some programming errors (for example, when a network connection is trying to be created in a main thread).
• SurfaceFlingerPlugin – visualises the position and size of the layers (and their visible area) from the dump of the SurfaceFlinger service.
• WindowManagerPlugin – reconstructs the window list.

This is an example of the functionality available in ChkBugReport, and as you can see, this tool extracts a lot of valuable information from the bugreports. We will add new information on GitHub continuously, where one by one all the functionality will be explained. We will also post updates in the ChkBugReport forum thread on the XDA forum. We are also happy for any questions or comments posted there.

Feel free to start using ChkBugReport today, we hope it will make life a lot easier helping out with your bugreport analysis. However, since this is now open source, we would be really happy if you would work together with us to improve this tool, so feel free to give us any ideas, suggestions or contributions, either in the comments of this blogpost or in the ChkBugReport forum thread on XDA forum.

More information

• Get the latest updates in the ChkBugReport forum thread on XDA forum.
• Download ChkBugReport source code from GitHub.
• Read more in the ChkBugReport wiki pages at GitHub.
• Have a look in the installation guide to get started using ChkBugReport.
• Go directly to the Code/Downloads section to get started right away.
• Learn more about Garbage Collection.
• Read about the FTRACE functionality.
• Get GtkWave viewer.
• Check out our other open developer community blog posts.

As we continue to discover great developers and great games through our Stand out from the crowd programme, the top Standout developers receive equally great benefits. This includes featuring developers’ games in our Games recommender and Storefront widget for top placement of these apps in phones. Developers may also be featured on the Sony Ericsson channel on Android Market™ for added visibility. Another great benefit we provide to top Standout developers is visibility and promotion of their games at Sony Ericsson events and tradeshows, giving you premium exposure to tech-savvy attendees. (You can read more about the Standout benefits further below.)

As part of the Stand out from the crowd campaign, we’ve sponsored four standout developers to attend Mobile Games Forum – Deemedya, Digiment, FDG Entertainment, and LudoCraft LTD. While at MGF, these developers will be participating as panellists on sessions on both days of the event. Sony Ericsson will also be demoing all their games during the networking sessions. You can read more about these development studios and their Xperia™-optimised games below:

Deemedya

Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, digital media company Deemedya is an international developer, publisher and distributor of mobile content. They take traditional, mainstream brands, companies, products and activities into the new world of mobile and social media. Deemedya’s games optimised for Xperia™ smartphones include Further Beyond Fighting, Trial Xtreme and Trial Xtreme 2. On Day 1, Doron Kagan, Co-CEO of Deemedya, will be a panellist for the session Platform debate: what are the right operating systems and hardware? at 10:05 (Wednesday, January 25).  

Digiment

Located in London, England with development studios in Norway (main dev studio) and Russia, Digiment is an award winning, leading independent game development and self-publishing company, specialising in premium quality games on a wide range of mobile, handheld and desktop platforms for digital distribution and download. Digiment’s Marv the Miner 2 is fully optimised for Xperia™ PLAY and will be demoed at MGF networking sessions.

FDG Entertainment

FDG Entertainment is a development studio located in Munich, Germany. Their optimised games for Xperia™ PLAY include Beyond Ynth and Beyond Ynth Christmas Edition. On Day 2, at the Social Games and Virtual Goods Forum, Philipp Döschl, Co-Founder of FDG Entertainment will be a panellist for the session Is giving the games away worth more or should freemium F-off? at 10:00 (Thursday, January 26).

LudoCraft

LudoCraft is a dynamic games studio and an innovative consulting partner in Finland. They specialise in the design and development of collaborative multiplayer games for PCs by harnessing high-end 3D game technologies. Xperia™-optimised games from LudoCraft include AstroComet and RoboFonics. On Day 2, at the Social Games and Virtual Goods Forum, Niina Karvinen, Marketing Specialist at LudoCraft will be a panellist for the session How to encourage cross promotion for social game discovery at 11:55 (Thursday, January 26).

For more details on Sony Ericsson’s activities at MGF 2012, check out the Mobile Games Forum listing on our Developer World Event Calendar.

About the Stand out from crowd program

With the launch of Xperia™ PLAY and Xperia™ ion, our PlayStation ® Certified Android™ smartphones, Sony Ericsson is looking for games developers who are mobile innovators and ready to stand out from the crowd. We provide you with the best platform to launch and take your games to the next level. In return, you get access to a targeted audience looking to purchase the best games available, supported on a promotional platform across all markets around the world that uses digital, PR and retail to shout about your games.

Here’s how the Stand out from the program can help you:

• Become part of Sony Ericsson’s marketing campaigns.
• Take the great unique gaming controls into account.
• Become visible in the Game recommender app in Sony Ericsson phones.
• Get pushed in global press activities – present in 140 markets.
• Get promoted in Sony Ericsson social media activites (we have 4 million fans on Facebook!).

We’ve already done heavy promotion of two developers from the Stand out from the crowd program – Be-Rad Entertainment and CatfishBlues Games. Both of these standouts received mention on the official Sony Ericsson press release for Gamescom 2011, a listing on the Xperia Games Blog, a profile story on Developer World, a YouTube video, and Facebook and Twitter mentions.

So are you ready to stand out at the next event? Go to our Stand out from the crowd homepage to get started.

More information

• Get programme information, speaker info, and full agenda for Mobile Games Forum.
• Get in the developer spotlight through the Stand out from the crowd programme.
• Read our CatfishBlues Games developer standout story on Developer World and view the CatfishBlues Games video on YouTube.
• Read our Be-Rad Entertainment developer standout story on Developer World and view the Be-Rad Entertainment video on YouTube.

JAN 24 Note: The list of GLONASS-supported Xperia phones has been updated below!*

Hi, I’m Magnus Persson, Positioning Specialist at Sony Ericsson. I recently wrote an article on how indoor maps can save you money and add extra value to your organisation. Now I’d like to introduce another navigation topic called GLONASS.

Have you ever noticed how your navigation application suddenly slows and starts lagging when driving in downtown cities, just when you need precise instructions the most? This is mostly likely caused by the surrounding buildings blocking the view towards the GPS satellites. In order for a phone to calculate a good position, a clear line of access to four or more satellites is needed. If the signals have bounced off a wall before reaching the receiver, it will reduce the accuracy of the position. This is where GLONASS, another version of satellite based positioning system, can help.

What are GPS and GLONASS?

GPS stands for Global Positioning System and is a satellite based positioning system owned and maintained by the US Air Force. The GPS system currently contains 31 active satellites transmitting signals. GPS is used by millions of civil devices to calculate the position.

GLONASS stands for Globalnaya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema and is also a satellite based positioning system but is owned and maintained by the Russian Space Forces. GLONASS development started in 1976 but it was not until October 2011 that full global coverage with modern satellites was achieved with 24 active satellites. Hence the number of GLONASS-only devices is very limited.

How GLONASS improves positioning

It’s simple math – by supporting both systems in a receiver, the number of available global satellites increases from 31 to 55. Therefore, more geographic locations are able to receive four or more signals from satellites, which in turn means more successful position calculations and also better accuracy of the calculated positions in challenging environments.

Field tests in downtown San Francisco found that the positioning accuracy of adding GLONASS improved as much as 50%. The test were executed with the help of Qualcomm  using two Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ smartphones, and 600 measurements were recorded and analyzed per device.

* The number of satellites in average that were used to calculate the position. More satellites usually mean a more reliable and accurate location.

**CEP 68% means that 68% of the 600 measurements are within this distance, in meters, from the reference location. Hence lower values mean better accuracy.

How your app can benefit from GLONASS

Now that you understand the benefits of using GLONASS, the next step is ensuring that your app utilises it. If you’ve already developed an Android™ app using the GPS provider, and if the app is running on any 2011 Xperia™ smartphones, mostly likely it’s already using GLONASS satellites to improve the positioning accuracy and navigation experience. In particular, the Xperia™ arc, Xperia™ arc S, Xperia™ ray, Xperia™ neo, Xperia™ neo v, Xperia™ pro, Xperia™ PLAY, Xperia™ active, Live with Walkman™, Xperia™ mini and Xperia™ mini pro [list updated JAN 24]* (along with the latest Xperia™ software) are all capable of supporting GLONASS!

The GLONASS enhancement is transparent and backwards compatible with the existing applications but there are ways to see the benefit of the GLONASS satellites. One way is to download and install the free GPS Test application by Chartcross Ltd. from Android Market. The satellites numbered 65 to 88 are GLONASS satellites that are being tracked.

Screenshot example of Chartcross Ltd.’s GPS Test application.

If you would like to indicate in any way in your application if GLONASS satellites are used to calculate the position you can do so by checking the GpsSatellite objects returned by the getSatellites method. If the PRN value returned by getPrn is between 65 and 88 and the usedInFix method returns true the last position was calculated using a GLONASS satellite.

To save power, the GLONASS receiver is only activated in problematic locations, such as in an urban environment with high rise buildings. Therefore, if you are in an open sky environment where there are enough GPS satellites available to calculate a good accuracy position, GLONASS will automatically be switched off temporarily to enhance the battery lifetime.

So the next time you’re having problems getting a fix on your location, use an Xperia™ smartphone supporting GLONASS to get faster and more accurate location information.

More information

• Get more information on GLONASS.
• Learn more about GPS.
• Read Magnus Persson’s previous navigation post on how indoor maps can save money and add value.
• Find additional location service details on Qualcomm’s mobile content services.
• See the Qualcomm video explaining GLONASS.

Feature image courtesy of ariadna @ Morguefile.

The Sony Developer sites offer a great pool of resources with which Xperia developers can use to build upon their own mobile applications experience. If you haven’t had a chance to check out all of Sony’s developer resources, here’s a quick look at what the site has to offer:

sonydeveloper.com

The central location for all Sony developers is sonydeveloper.com. Here, you’ll find a subset of links focusing on Sony Android™ and Yahoo!® Widgets development.

Sony Android™ development

The Sony Internet TV powered by Google™, Sony Tablet™ S and Sony Tablet™ P are powered by the Android™ platform. At the Sony Android™ development site, you can download the application development kit for the Sony Tablet™. This site also has a forum for Sony Tablet™ questions and for general information topics. As a member, you’ll be able to access TV applications and even submit a TV app. TV apps will be reviewed by Sony and may then be featured on Sony Select in Android Market™ for Google TV.  And to make discovery of your app even easier, Sony offers its Select App site which highlights new and unique Android applications in a number of categories, recommended for Sony Tablet™ devices. Recommended applications will be spotlighted at launch with more to come in the following weeks and months. The service is similar to Sony Ericsson’s Get apps and Get music widgets, and similar to the Games Recommender on Xperia™ PLAY.

YAHOO!® Widgets development

BRAVIA® Internet Widgets are small downloadable applications powered by YAHOO!® Widgets and provide you access to the latest in news, weather, stock info, and interactive content when your TV is connected to the Internet. At the YAHOO!® Widgets developer site, get developer news on BRAVIA® Internet Widgets. And soon, you’ll also have access to images, examples, tips and techniques to help you create exciting new applications.

…So why not start developing applications across Sony devices

If you’re ready to expand your mobile app development for other Sony devices, why not take some time to look around at all these Sony developer sites. We’d love to see Android™ apps utilising cross device experiences. We’re also aiming to publish articles focusing on the different technologies available when developing for different screens and devices.

Good luck and happy developing!

More information

• Checking out the starting point for anyone interested in Sony Developer services.
• Get started with Sony Android development.
• Discover BRAVIA® Internet Widgets development.
• See our Sony Developer services affiliate page.

On the 10^th of January, we announced four new Xperia™ smartphones – Xperia™ ion, Xperia™ S, Xperia™ acro HD and Xperia™ NX. This article aims to give you some more details on the last two, Xperia™ acro HD and Xperia™ NX.  Xperia™ acro HD is the follow-up to Xperia acro with popular Japan-specific features including Mobile Wallet via Felica and Mobile TV. Xperia™ NX is a variant of Xperia™ S for the Japanese market. Both will be available in Japan from this spring. Read more after the jump.

Both Xperia™ acro HD and Xperia™ NX will be launching on the Android™ 2.3 (Gingerbread) platform. Both devices have 1GB of RAM and a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 MSM8260 dual core processor for stunning, fluid graphics, plus long battery life. You’ll also find the Adreno™ 220 GPU for an enhanced level of 3D graphics performance, and allows for support of a number of APIs, including OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenVG 1.1. For more information on OpenGL, see our previous OpenGL blog post.

These devices also provide the full Sony entertainment experience with easy connectivity to the Sony Entertainment Network and across multiple screens, whether it’s TV, smartphone, laptop or tablet. You can watch content from Video Unlimited and access the PlayStation® Network for PlayStation-certified content to guarantee high-quality smartphone gaming and access to the PlayStation Store.    

Both products are also GLONASS-capable, allowing the device greater positioning accuracy when using navigation-related applications, and ANT+ enabled, which is an interoperability function that enables the collection, automatic transfer and tracking of sensor data for monitoring of personal wellness. Stay tuned to Developer World for more in depth information about GLONASS.

Key features for Xperia™ acro HD:

• 4.3 inch screen with Mobile BRAVIA® Engine with HD resolution screen (1280 x 720)
• 1.5GHz dual-core processor for fast browsing and content download
• 1 GB RAM
• 12 MP camera with Exmor R™ sensor with Fastest Capture to take shots in just one click directly from standby mode
• Mobile Wallet via Felica
• Android 2.3
• Mobile TV (One Seg)
• Water and dustproof via -  IP57
• MicroSD card slot
• infrared port data exchange (IrDA)
• Water-resistant 

Key features for Xperia™ NX:

• 4.3 inch screen with Mobile BRAVIA® Engine with HD resolution screen (1280 x 720)
• 1.5GHz dual-core processor for fast browsing and content download
• 1 GB RAM
• 12 MP camera with Exmor R™ sensor with Fastest Capture to take shots in just one click directly from standby mode
• Android 2.3
• Water-resistant

Xperia™ acro HD and Xperia™ NX will be available to Japanese consumers from this spring.

More information

• Read the official press release for Xperia acro HD and Xperia NX.
• Learn more about Xperia acro HD and Xperia NX on the consumer website.
• Get information on the Xperia ion and the Xperia S.

In the ANT+ ecosystem, an Android smartphone could be used in several different ways. It could be the sensor broadcasting data, or the receiver storing data and possibly displaying it. But it could also be the Internet gateway to publish data. Or, it could be everything at once. At Sony Ericsson, we’re happy to have included support for this interesting and useful technology in the new Xperia™ S and Xperia™ ion. Besides these phones, Sony Ericsson has released several phones supporting ANT+ previously, including all 2011 Xperia™ phones except Xperia™ PLAY.

To find out more about ANT+ and the latest news about the ANT+ emulator, we spoke with Jeff Fung, who is one of the main developers at Dynastream.