Who wants faster phones and tablets? We totally do — and thankfully so does Qualcomm. This year CEO Dr. Paul E. Jacobs is taking the stage for the prestigious pre-CES keynote presentation, the one that Microsoft has hosted in years past. Last year Steve Ballmer brought out Ryan Seacrest to engage in some banter. What surprises are ahead this year? Join us to find out.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets
The message of tonight’s Sony CES press event? Bigger’s not always, better, we guess. The huge reveal on the side of the stage at tonight’s event were two new Ultra HD TVs— smaller siblings of the positively massive 84-inch beast we’ve already seen. But what these guys lack in sheer size, they make up for a bit with bezel. There’s a lot that on either side of the display. That’s where the magnetic fluid speakers live, right in the middle of the glossy black expanse.
The overall effect is a TV that looks much wider than it is tall. The TV also looks a fair bit thicker than a lot of the HDTVs current on the market. As for the display itself — that’s great, as to be expected. As lifelike as Kaz suggested on-stage, though some of the colors do look a touch oversaturated as you get up close to the thing. The TV sits atop a shiny silver ring that juts out a bit from the front. The new models measure 65- and 55-inches. They’re due to arrive this spring.
Billy Steele contributed to this report.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Nikon clearly wants to make amends for its unspectacular J2 launch late last summer: it’s launching not one but two 1 series models that provide a stronger incentive to go Nikon among lower-end mirrorless cameras. The 14.2-megapixel J3 and 10.1-megapixel S1 mostly receive hand-me-down features from the semi-pro V2, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The leftovers give them uncommonly accurate 73-point autofocusing and an upgraded Expeed 3A processor that can handle 15FPS burst photography with continuous focus — three times the frame rate of the J2 in the same conditions. Apart from their resolution, the main separators between the J3 and S1 are the J3’s inclusion of a simple panorama mode and a slightly wider ISO range for the S1, which starts at ISO 100 versus the J3’s 160.
Both new bodies ship in February, when the S1 will lower the 1 system’s entry price to $500 with an 11-27.5mm lens, and the J3 will have a suitably in-between price of $600 with 10-30mm optics. The shooters will soon be joined by new lenses and accessories, as well. A 6.7-13mm (18-35mm equivalent), f/3.5-5.6 wide-angle lens and a 10-100mm (27-270mm equivalent) f/4-5.6 telephoto zoom don’t have definitive release dates, but should respectively cost $500 and $550. Scuba divers who want a J3 or S1 for their excursions will also get a WP-N2 underwater case in February, albeit at a $750 price that’s more expensive than the cameras themselves.
Source: Nikon
The budget, compact long-zoom camera field must be a cutthroat one — Nikon unveiled the Coolpix S6300 early last year, quietly slipped out the S6400 later in 2012, and it’s already previewing a S6500 at CES. What’s new that justifies such a quick refresh? WiFi, mostly: the S6500 should be one of the less expensive cameras in its class to share its photos directly over a local network. Photographers with self-conscious subjects also get five new Glamor Retouch modes that brighten cheeks, eyes and teeth. Otherwise, those who bought an S6400 will feel like they’re in familiar territory between the 16-megapixel backlit CMOS sensor, 12x (25-300mm equivalent) lens and 1080p video capture. The S6500 arrives towards the end of January for $220, which makes it low-hanging fruit for anyone who wants a dash of everything in their next point-and-shoot upgrade.
Gallery: Nikon S6500 Hands-on at CES 2013
Dana Murph contributed to this report.
Continue reading Nikon outs Coolpix S6500 with WiFi, new beauty touch-ups (update: hands-on photos)
Source: Nikon
Americans wanting to leap into DSLRs with a Nikon D5200 have had no choice but to sit on pins and needles waiting for a release date. As of CES, we know that they’ll have a more comfortable seat very soon: the company has committed to bringing the advanced amateur camera to the US in late January for $900 with an 18-55mm lens in the box. Some of the D5200’s companion accessories should be available at the same time, including the $95 WR-T10 and $278 WR-10 wireless remotes, the $127 WR-R10 remote transceiver and the $75 WR-A10 wireless remote adapter. The D5200 isn’t the cheapest route into interchangeable lens cameras in the wake of these prices, but it potentially hits a sweet spot for those whose love of photography is just slightly more than a casual fling.
Continue reading Nikon D5200 to reach US photographers in late January for $900
Source: Nikon
Sony is showing off an organic light-emitting wet dream in 8 million pixels. Why can’t a 4K OLED TV exist today? Now that I’ve seen the future as a 56-inch prototype, I’m sad I have to wait until tomorrow to see it again. All televisions should be this incredible. More »
4K TVs look amazing. OLED TVs look amazing. You can imagine, therefore, how good a 4K OLED TV will look. Sony has just wowed the audience here at CES 2013 with the news that it’s produced the world’s first Ultra High Definition television that uses Organic LEDs. Given how many companies have launched 4K sets here — Westinghouse, Hisense, Toshiba and LG, just to name a few — it’s not unusual to hear that Sony has one-upped the crowd by adding a pinch of OLED to the mix.
The 56-inch set boasts a native 3,840 x 2,160 OLED panel, and a prototype will be on display here at CES 2013 in Las Vegas. Sony’s pimping its own “oxide semiconductor TFTs” and “Super Top Emission” technologies, but isn’t saying much else. There’s zero mention of contrast ratio, refresh ratio, thickness, power draw, or any other specifications. Not exactly a shocker, but disheartening nonetheless. We’ll be prying for more — including any plans for a commercial release — as the show rolls on.
Gallery: Sony 56-inch 4K OLED TV
Daniel Cooper contributed to this article.
Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Source: Sony, Ray Hartjen (Twitter)
An HDTV without a sound system to match is like a Ferrari on 14-inch rims — still a beautiful sight to behold, but its performance falls short of what could be, given the right accessory. Vizio knows this, and so has announced its 2013 lineup of sound bars to give your HDTV some audio to match. Plus, they’re all Bluetooth enabled, so they can stream tunes from your mobile device of choice as well. They come in 40-, 42-, and 54-inch models, with the smallest bar packing 2.1 channel audio, and the two larger sizes delivering 5.1 surround sound. Each bar also comes with a wireless subwoofer to deliver low-end punch — the 40- and 42-inchers come with a 6-inch sub, while the big boy gets an 8-inch unit.
Vizio has unified the look of its 2013 sound bar lineup, giving it the same understated design language seen in their new HDTVs. We got to listen to all the new bars in person today, and found the audio quality to be quite good. The bars all handled hi’s and mids without distortion at theater volume levels, and faithfully reproduced dialogue without sacrificing deep and rich sound effects while watching a clip from Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Bass from from the 8-inch sub was particularly impressive, as it shook the room with every explosion from the movie. As usual, full pricing and availability are hard to come by at the moment, but the 42-inch model will retail for $330 later this year.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Sony has had over a year now to dust away any residual Ericsson branding and with a reinvigorated direction towards mobile, it’s welcoming the CES crowds of Las Vegas with two new smartphones — the Xperia Z and the Xperia ZL. Both are running Android Jelly Bean, have 5-inch 1080p screens laced with Sony’s new Bravia Mobile 2 technology, quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro and new 13-megapixel Exmor RS camera sensors, capable of recording HDR video.
Has Sony finally crafted a flagship able to go toe-to-toe with the competition? Well, the Xperia Z exudes class — and it’s light. With about the same thickness as the iPhone, the phone is similar with all straight surfaces, barring some slightly rounded corners. Sony’s calling the design language “omnibalance” and you can expect to see similar design licks in its other products in the near future. Picking it up, it feels better and more premium than any phone we’ve seen from Sony before and, oddly, it’s even waterproof. Comparing the Xperia Z against the Xperia ZL, the oblong, broad Xperia Z felt almost too big in our hands; the ZL felt much more at home. Sony’s barely unveiled them on stage at its press event, but we got the chance to play with both devices earlier today, (just about) wrapping our fingers around both the Xperia Z and the slightly smaller Xperia ZL. So what did we think? Hop on after the break for our hands-on video and full impressions.
Gallery: Sony Xperia Z hands-on at CES 2013
Continue reading Sony Xperia Z: hands-on with the new flagship at CES 2013 (video)
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Sony
Sony announced its first quad-core smartphone at its CES press conference today: the Xperia Z. The company will be hoping this new Android flagship can deliver the scalps of high-end rival devices such as Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and Apple’s iPhone 5. The 4G handset has a symmetrical, rectangular slab design with clean lines and flat glass panes to front and back, coupled with blunted edges and minimally rounded corners.
Sony smartphones haven’t exactly fared well against the competition in recent years, something its own mobile chief ‘fessed up to in the fall. But the Japanese electronics maker appears determined to get its mobile house in order, starting with the 2011 buy-out of its Swedish other half Ericsson – followed by its first solely Sony-branded handset at last year’s CES (the Xperia S).
This year Sony has upped its game — as well it must — with its first quad-core flagship, and its first 5-inch screen phone. The Xperia Z is the “Yuga” device which leaked earlier this month. Sony is also launching a variant — called the Xperia ZL (aka “Odin”) — which has a slightly different industrial design/shape with a curved, plastic back to “fit easier in the hand,” which isn’t waterproof but is otherwise the same hardware. Don’t get distracted, though: Sony is going to be shouting loudest about the Xperia Z, calling it its “primary” and “lead” device for 2013 in most markets, including Western Europe and Japan.
Here are the key specs for the Xperia Z:
Sony is still trash-talking its output last year, and clearly wants to start afresh — with a clean (glass) slate. ”The Ericsson acquisition had gone through so quickly, in reality we weren’t really fully prepared to be part of the wider Sony family/fully integrated in the Sony family [last year],” Calum MacDougall, Director of Xperia Marketing Programme at Sony, told TechCrunch. “But we think this device is a real step forward in a real Sony smartphone. It combines the best of what Sony has to offer.”
With a 5-inch display, the enormo-phone trend that Samsung has been driving with devices like its Galaxy Note series and its flagship Galaxy S3 has not passed Sony by. But despite packing a massive screen, the handset feels relatively lightweight (146g) and manageable, being just 7.9 mm thick. It’s a fraction thicker than the iPhone 5 but thinner than the Galaxy S3. It also has a premium feel, thanks to those tempered glass panels on the front and back (no, you can’t remove the battery).
Sony has focused its full attention on the full HD (1920 x 1080) screen which includes its Reality Display TV tech and Mobile Bravia Engine 2 — the former giving the screen a more realistic colour-cast than some of the hyper-saturated AMOLED smartphone screens out there, and the latter designed to improve viewing of non-HD footage (by sharpening and increasing the saturation of content — to make it more vivid and improve clarity). Pixel density is exceptionally sharp, at 443 ppi, so if you want a device for watching movies and TV shows on the go, the Xperia Z shouldn’t disappoint.
Turning to the 13-megapixel camera, the Sony Exmor RS mobile imaging sensor offers improved low-light performance, and also supports HDR for video — a first for smartphones, according to the company. The front-facing lens utilizes Sony’s Exmor R sensor.
Elsewhere, Sony has added contactless transfer/payment technology NFC, which continues to struggle to gain serious traction with consumers but is at least a nice to have for pairing with NFC peripherals like speakers. (Sony is also launching NFC- and Miracast-enabled TVs at CES which locate the NFC chip in the TV remote so you can share content from a smartphone to the TV by tapping the handset on the remote.)
Being now an entirely Japanese company, Sony has also made the Xperia Z waterproof (and dustproof) — a very common feature for Japanese smartphones.
On the software side, the Xperia Z runs Android 4.1 Jellybean, which is a slight disappointment since Android 4.2 is out in the wild. But Sony assures me it intends for the Xperia Z to get upgrades to 4.2 and the next iteration of Android (codenamed Key Lime Pie). On top of Android, the Xperia Z has a lightweight Sony UI, but thankfully the company appears to be learning that less is more when it comes to skinning Android. The UI has shed some of the uglier widget animations that were a blight on past Xperia devices, and felt fast and slick during my brief hands on. Sony said the UI is not something it intends to emphasise — it’s not even giving it a brand name.
Instead, Sony is fully focused on talking up its multimedia services, which sit inside the primary media applications on the Xperia Z: Walkman for music downloads, and to access Sony’s Music Unlimited streaming service (which offers 80 million tracks, but only if you pay a monthly subscription); Movies for video content, including access to Sony’s Video Unlimited store for renting or buying films; and PlayStation Mobile for accessing Sony’s games app store. There’s also an Album application where photos live, which also pulls in images from your Facebook and Picasa accounts and includes a geotagging feature to map where pictures were taken.
“The great strength of Apple is the consistency of the user interface across products so we know we have to match that if we’re going to deliver a wider ecosystem,” said MacDougall. “We intend to offer a unified experience across multiple Sony products. This is about providing a consistent Sony entertainment experience across multiple devices.”
The Xperia Z also includes a battery maximising mode — called Battery Stamina Mode — that can be switched on to extend standby time by 4x (or more). It works by turning off all background apps when the phone’s screen is off, with the exception of standard telephony and SMS. Users can also whitelist certain apps to ensure they still run in the background if required.
Sony is offering the Xperia Z in three colour options: black, white, and purple (see below). Exact launch date, markets and pricing are to be confirmed, but Sony said it is planning a “global launch” in “Q1 2013,” adding that the initial focus will be Western Europe.
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