Earlier in the week it was revealed that Sony Ericsson were no longer planning to use the Symbian operating system on it’s future mobile handset releases. The company fully intent to take the Android OS and run with it, hoping to become a major player in the Android handset market (no comment from this Xperia owner). Now SE have announced that they are planning to release a Windows 7 based mobile phone and that it may not be all that far away from release.

Both Jan Uddenfeldt and Aldo Liguori from Sony Ericsson have stated that the company has no further plans to work with Symbian systems in the future with Mr Liguori confirming as a spokesperson for SE that, ” We have no plans for the time being to develop any new products to the Symbian Foundation standard or operating system”.

So, that seems to be the end of Symbian phones from Sony Ericsson and now Microsoft’s head of marketing in the UK Oded Ran has confirmed that Sony Ericsson are actively working on a WP7  handset, at least one handset actually.The Microsoft statement ties in with a comment recently made by Mr Uddenfeldt himself stating that a, “Windows 7 Phone  is on the roadmap”.

It appears that the future is looking rosy for Windows 7 in the SE camp and we feel that it won’t be very long before Sony Ericsson are releasing specific product details for their own Windows 7 powered handset. Hopefully they won’t forget that Android update along the way though.

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The official UK release of the Sony Bravia SMP-N100 set-top ‘media streamer’ has been announced in a press release from the company. The SMP-N100 will go on sale in UK stores next month.

Through the N100, it is possible to access the Bravia internet applications which include Blip.tv, Daily Motion, LoveFilm and Youtube and to connect to the internet via your home WiFi or ethernet connection to stream media directly. Access to Sonys own music and video service Qriocity is also available through the N100. The N100 also features a USB port which can be used with external media devices to play back AVCHD, DivX HD, MKV and some DIVX/AVI files.

• BRAVIA Internet Video for access to a wide range of online content
• Wi-Fi connectivity: watch content in any room without cabling
• DLNA network audio/video capability: content can be streamed from network storage (as well as viewed from USB devices)
• IP Content Noise Reduction to clean-up streamed video
• On-screen GUI, plus free iPhone/iPod Touch/Android control appsControl of the N100 is gained through the Sony XMB menu system and the device can also be accessed through an iPhone or an Android handset.

Pricing has yet to be confirmed however, we expect the cost of the SMP-N100 to be between £100 and £150 on release.

via press release

Software supremos Electronic Arts (EA) have stated in an interview with gaming trade magazine MCV, that they think that in the long term, the Sony PlayStation 3 can catch up with the Xbox 360 in terms of sales and popularity, in the UK marketplace.

“We could certainly see Sony come back – in the UK it’s still a head-to-head competition between PlayStation and Xbox, but on the continent Sony is traditionally stronger than Microsoft”

Senior vice president of EA in Europe Jens Uwe Intat made the prediction, although he also indicated that EA are happy to see the Xbox 360 and PS3 compete and that the Xbox Kinect and PlayStation Move controller hardware are “both very interesting ideas”.

The full interview can be found here on the MCV website.

Although Sony Ericsson had never confirmed the release date for the updated version of the Android operating system used on it’s Xperia X10 hansdets, the company has now moved to announce on it’s official blog that the update is not imminent and will not arrive before October 2010.

The Xperia X10, the Xperia X10 Mini and the X10 Mini Pro all run on the Android operating system currently and are using the 1.6 version of the Google OS. Whilst other handset manufacturers have pushed out their mobile phones with Android 2.1 or 2.2, the Xperia range has sadly been left behind by the reluctance of Sony Ericsson to update the firmware to a firmware that many users desire greatly. Sony Ericsson have never actually explained why there is such a delay to update and the latest announcement could see some Xperia users leave their Sony Ericsson handsets behind and move on to brands such as Samsung, HTC and Apple.

Running on an outdated firmware such as 1.6 Android is slowing the development of Android applications and games for the Xperia range and with the upcoming release of another Xperia handset, in the form of the Xperia X8, the Xperia phone range is left unable to play many games and applications available on the Android market because many applications are created with 2.1 or 2.2 compatibility in mind. This is a shame for Xperia owners who paid a healthy sum for their handsets and are struggling to get the best use out of their phones.

Hopefully Sony Ericsson are a big enough company, with enough care about their customers to resolve the updating issue sooner rather than later. They certainly aren’t a company that lets their customers down regularly so fingers crossed that Android 2.1 arrives soon.

Official SE blog

Sony have unveiled a fresh set of specifications for their Vaio range in Asia, Engadget has reported.

Intel’s i5-560m CPU is now an available configuration option on a number of Vaio laptop models, whilst the new addition to the F Series options is the NVIDIA 425m graphics processor, which can now be chosen by potential buyers to beef up their laptop specs. The Z series of laptops comes out the winner in the freshen up though, as buyers now have the option to choose the Intel 2.66GHz Core i5580m or the Intel 2.8GHz Core i7-640m processors when creating their specification list for their new notebook.