An invitation arrived in my inbox from Brando for an event taking place in London which would involve getting hands on with some of the latest Sony Ericsson handsets, which I eagerly obliged to accept. I was last invited to a Sony Ericsson event way back in, wait, never actually. So a first on the cards here. Brando are not alien to myself though, I did attend one of the events they hosted since acquiring the Three account.
Eager to see what was up with the Sony Ericsson Play and Arc in particular I ventured out.
Hosted at Kyashii - a very stylish and recently renovated and under new management, it was visually pretty accommodating, logistics wise could have been better. That didn't deter from the fact I liked it. From the black on black decoration in the passage way which made me feel like I was somewhat in some other virtual world to the well highlighted private areas with more light and a brighter white décor and fish tanks, it was setting the mood up nicely. Not that many around me seemed to appreciate it, most were queuing up at the bar for the free beverages on offer, something else I'm not alien to, but alas this time I was purely on Lemonade.
The only negative I thing I could say about this whole situation comes in two points;
- Far too many people were invited / turned up and there was not enough devices around to play with.
- The venue wasn't big enough to host the event itself, as swanky as it was, moving back and forth between two floors is not ideal. The Play stuff was hosted on one floor upstairs, whilst the Xperia handset demos were downstairs.
I know the temptation is there to make it a successful meetup and try to get as many people involved as possible, but more doesn't always = better. The key thing I'd point out is getting the "right" mix of people invited, a mix of bloggers, gamers, tech enthusiasts who would offer feedback and get the "hype" going on social networks might be more beneficial for everyone. Looking at the hashtag for the night #XperiaMWC, it's kinda evident myself and a few fellow bloggers were the only ones tweeting from the event itself.
Moving on from my my mini rant, here's how the devices imprinted their impressions on me. Keep in mind I was told all these were pre release devices. All were running Gingerbread (Android 2.3) from what I saw.
First things first - The Xperia Play - The Playstation Phone
The rumours of this phone in development have been around for years, literally. My thoughts to this day still has to be; is there a need for it? Is there a market for it? In my pretty blunt opinion - no, not for a device anyway. Mobile gaming yes, an actual handset geared towards gaming, not so much. It's yet another example of a company thinking in the wrong mindset, in this instance unfortunately Sony Ericsson.
Nokia has been down this road with it's N-Gage devices and it's failure twice highlights this very fact quite evidently.
The Playstation Suite makes more sense and is in line with my thinking of how mobile gaming should be approached. The success of the iPhone and it's gaming capabilities highlight this fact pretty evidently. The Playstation Suite itself though is only a step towards the right direction, there is still a lot being missed, which Microsoft and Xbox get and have been doing so for years - but that's maybe for another post.
The actual Xperia Play device just like it's many brothers and sisters is very stylish, Sony Ericsson design some gorgeous hardware (yes it's an opinion), it's very similar to the PSP and incorporates many of the Sony Ericsson Xperia line-up of phones nicely. The D-Pad is pretty good as expected from Sony, very much Playstation experience being deployed here. The device itself is slightly bulky due to the slide form factor which is to be expected. the analogue stuff isn't exactly easy to use and the general consensus was, it might have been better utilising this space for something else - say a mini physical keyboard. I personally thought it would be better to get rid of the whole slide and have touch gaming only. Here's why;
Fatigue - Physical fatigue in this case. The Play suffers from the same problems the PSP does; it's not comfortable playing games for any length of time because there is no support for the two smaller fingers which aren't being utilised. Sure through extensive playtime you could train and get used to this, but why should one have to?
There are other physical annoyances too; the two trigger buttons are nice when the device is closed, but when open (which is when they are being used) they are hard to actually use, don't expect to try and quick scope if / when there is a FPS game released on the Play.
Software - Android - Graphics
The custom Sony Ericsson Timescape and facelift is evident and looks decent eye candy. Fans of it will love it as it's been improved. There is minimal lag and response is pretty decent. The Adreno GPU powering the graphics for gameplay somewhat struggles at times. During Asphalt 4 there were many times when the Play struggled to keep up with my drift cornering (yes I owned the Play) there was severe lag and loss of frames. The dust effects were great, but the game didn't run smoothly due to some of these effects. It did look amazing mostly though. The 3D graphics were on par with the PSP stuff I've seen, but then again the iPhone can compete here too.
I also had a play with a beat em up Bruce Lee game which didn't suffer from any of the problems found in Asphalt 4, but then again there are less frames to contend with and gameplay is a lot slower paced.
Although I don't agree with the device being made at all, there are ways to improve it and it's services to try and make it as successful as it could be;
- Dedicated game suite. As the Xperia Play is aimed at keen gamers, why isn't there a gaming hub / suite in place? Far too many people where asking "where are the games?" - this is due to the games being installed on the device as applications like most other generic stuff. Why isn't there a dedicated button to launch a gaming hub / suite. One that directly takes the user to the games and closes / kills all other non essential apps process to give more attention to the games.
- It's a phone gaming device, yet I see there are no options to tell your friends you are playing on the Xperia Play, there is no social integration within the device to allow one to have a "gamer ID" and play online together. How about integrating the Playstation's PSN features here? Online presence, friends, chat, messaging, all this creates a more social hub to get users not only taking part in gaming and keeping them hooked in, but also spreading the word and getting more involved in doing so.
The biggest failure of the Xperia Play will be the same issue every handset has right now; battery life. I've seen and heard numbers being quoted of how many hours of gaming it will offer. Nonsense. The device will die in 2 hours of gaming alone - guaranteed. Problem is now you've also lost your phone functionality and connectivity too.
To conclude; the Xperia Play is a device which should never have been made and will fail solely for the very reasons the PSP failed. The real problem is there doesn't seem to be anyone in charge who seems to see the "massive" opportunity to do it right.
Xperia Pro - Less Is Sometimes More
Forgetting the really stupid naming scheme here lets get this over with quick. The Xperia Pro is a middle of the range, mid tier phone aimed to please those who don't really give a damn about mobile phones, what they run on, what megapixel it is, they just want one thing; the physical keyboard. They are the addicts of Messaging. So to them the keyboard is king.
The physical keyboard on the Pro is very spacious, and to be honest pretty comfortable. I'm not a massive fan of physical keyboards, I've long since moved on to the modern era and new way of doing things, but the keyboard itself is very impressive. Within a few minutes of getting used to it, I was typing away like a squirrel on caffeine. I left a nice little message in the device for anyone that may have found it later.
The handset itself is bulky due to the addition of this slide out keyboard and overall felt a lot heavier. Even more heavier than the Play. Saying that it was just about the right size for one handed use when operating the rest of the phone functions. Yet again Sony Ericsson have added their bit of "extra" value to it by customising the UI. Whilst the music player might be something useful keeping from all this UI overhaul, on the most I'm not a big fan.
So there you go, if you're looking for a mid range messaging device which is a Sony Ericsson running latest Android with a physical QWERTY keyboard, then there is only one choice. Go Pro.
Arc - All About The Curves
Lets get over the façade. I was only turning up for one reason; to get my hands on the Xperia Arc. This is the top of the range device announced by Sony Ericsson. This is the cream of the crop, the big daddy, the high end user, the social elite of all the Xperia stuff. The premium device Sony Ericsson has to offer to this day.
With the gorgeous design, the features and specs announced I was quite clearly tempted and had to get my hands on to try and make sure this was all it was hyped up to be. First impressions on seeing it with my own eyes was pretty decent. Everything looks different away from the perfection of a render, the Arc was no different. It didn't jump out at me as expected. Perhaps this was due to the poor lighting around the demo area, but I can look past that. I somehow managed to get the rep into a one on one situation to give me the full beans on this thing, which he obliged. He seemed to know what he was talking about, but still he was a demo rep, so there were limitations to his knowledge. Lets take the features on at a time;
Screen That Screams Out
There is a massive 4.2 inch screen taking up the most of the front of the device, it's vibrant and looks pretty gorgeous. Now I'm not a big fan of these massive screens, my tiny little hands just aren't big enough to operate them, but it was something beautiful to view. Having checked out a few videos and pictures I can honestly say it's pretty awesome.
HDMI Out
The Xperia Arc comes with HDMI Out so does the Nokia N8, but this is where the two similarities end. The HDMI Out in the Xperia Arc does so much more. Unlike the N8, the Arc still has full functionality of all the features whilst plugged in. This means one can use all the functions on a big screen. So doing that VOIP video chat is possible using the 50 inch TV instead of the small screen. But is it really something you'd want to do by using the handset still? Well here is the clever bit.
I was told with the newer TVs, once the phone is plugged in via the HDMI, the four coloured buttons on the TV remote can be used to control the functions of the phone, which essentially means you could leave the phone 5 feet away and control it with the TV remote. The TV in the demo obviously didn't have the feature so I didn't quite get to see it with my own eyes. So I'll wait till I see it perhaps.
8.1 Mega Pixel Camera
The Arc comes with a decent camera. There is a Sony Exmore CMOS sensor at the heart of it all, which takes better pictures in the dark from what I was told. There are also some software features which help the camera take pictures; Aperture f/2.4, Auto focus, Face detection being a few of those. I didn't manage to take any pictures to test it out. With camera's I think it's always better getting a better idea over a few weeks in different scenarios. There were some already taken by many before me, browsing through them I couldn't really judge how good they were as I don't know which settings were used, but they did look decent.
Physically Fit
The Xperia Arc claims to be the thinnest phone available, which is true if it's measured at it's thinnest point, but the top and bottom are a lot thicker. If you want to believe the hype then do so. Overall I was surprised by not how thin it was, but by how light it was. I was expecting something that was slightly heavy, this was a "premium" phone, but it felt like it was made from magical components. This reminds me of the Vivaz, if you like your phones to have a distinct weight to your handset, then this won't do. If you put it into a jacket or shirt pocket, you'll forget which one.
Timescape - Face The Realisation; You Are A Handset Maker
I put some questions to the rep regarding the Timescape and the UI customisation Sony Ericsson do to the Android handsets they've released. My main concern was the length of time it takes to deploy the updates released by Google and whether it was worth the time and effort put into customising the UI, keeping it updated and how much value they were adding by doing this.
From what I gathered the answer was; there have been changes made to ensure that updates released by Google are deployed to Sony Ericsson users as soon as possible. The changes relate to getting rid of the Mediascape feature found on the Xperia X10, which suffered from getting updates due to this very feature, which has now been scrapped. I was also told of some very ambitious on updates. According to the rep, Sony Ericsson "aims" to be the first to deploy latest updates to their devices after the official Google phones get the update. Whether they can meet these is yet to be seen. But good luck to Sony Ericsson in their efforts.
Are Android UI customisation needed anymore, are they justified, do they add any value to the whole Android experience? This is a post I'm forming in my mind and have been doing so for a week or so now. When it's done it will be up on here for all.
Conclusion
Whilst the venue was nice and there was WiFi available, there was 3G reception throughout the night and the football was on afterwards, some thoughts into getting more value from these meetups might enable Sony Ericsson getting more insight into how they can do better. I didn't get to chat with everyone on the night (there were far too many), but in general, the crowd are knowledgeable, they have visions of the future themselves, they can predict the next big thing and have expectations on what should be happening around their own specialised scenes and tech they cover. Tapping into this wealth of relatively cheap resource would reap benefits for all.
Some of us are more opinionated than others and some of us have different visions, preferences, which is to be expected. But the biggest piece of information I got from most I spoke to during the night was "Meh!"
That in itself tells me there is a lot more that can be done to learn from the community by actively engaging with them, their ideas, their opinions. The best way to do this? Get together in more intimate environments, more often, work with them. Find out what you're doing wrong, pay attention to the negatives above the positives.
One company used to do that, they got it, but seem to be engulfed by it in more recent times.
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