Sony may be testing new custom UI for Xperia phones

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Companies making smartphones have lots of opportunities to help their handsets stand out from the pack, and we’re well used to seeing brands deploy style cues that help make their phones easily recognizable, whether the woven back of a Motorola Droid or the bright polycarbonate of a Lumia handset. For Android OEMs, that ability for a company to give its phones a tell-tale look extends well beyond hardware, and the majority of manufacturers out there also outfit their phones with a customized user ...

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Sony Xperia Z3+ available in the US through Amazon

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

The Sony Xperia Z3+ is available internationally since the end of last month — we’re currently testing the device, with our full review coming next week — but sadly there are not plans for the device to officially reach the US. Instead, a beefed up version will soon land on Verizon’s line-up with the Xperia Z4v, a device that features a QHD screen, larger battery (at 3,000mAh), and support for wireless charging.However, ...

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Sony Xperia Z3+ vs Samsung Galaxy S6 (video)

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

Being made out completely of aluminum and glass, in addition to being their respective manufacturers’ flagships for this year, represent the perfect reasons for us to compare these two devices. But there’s a lot more to comparing these smartphones than what we just mentioned above, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do in our Sony Xperia Z3+ vs Samsung Galaxy S6 (and Edge) comparison.As usual, we’re focusing on hardware, software and user experience, as well as the camera, drawing some conclusions at the end, or, better said, setting the stage and making it easier ...

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Xperia Z3+ expected to boost Sony smartphone sales in Taiwan

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

The Xperia Z3+ (also known as the Xperia Z4 in some regions — Japan), which we’re currently dissecting in our review labs, is expected to boost Sony smartphone sales in Taiwan, according to “industry source” cited by DigiTimes. Sony is already reportedly holding 25 percent share of Taiwan’s high-end Android smartphone market, and this number is ...

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Sony Xperia Z3+ aka Xperia Z4 unboxing (video)

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

The Sony Xperia Z4 was announced for the Japanese market six months after the introduction of the Xperia Z3 in September of 2014, making Sony stay true to its “flagship every six months” policy. It took the company about a month to announce the Xperia Z4 globally, but with

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Snapdragon 810 v2.1 appears to be at the core of the Xperia Z3+, Xperia Z4 Tablet

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

The improved touch driver — to facilitate wet screen usability — on the Xperia Z3+ is just one of the enhancements hardware-wise that Sony has included in its 2015 remake/flagship. Apparently, the processor inside the phone has been improved as well, as a recently published software source code for the Xperia Z3+ refers to a certain msm8994-v2.1 chip.We do know that the MSM8994 is the Snapdragon 810, but, apparently, Qualcomm has issued a Snapdragon 810 v2.1 version of the ...

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Sony’s smartphone division could be seeing massive layoffs

Posted on by Rithvik Rao

In recent years, Sony has had little trouble producing some of the most stellar smartphones we’ve ever seen, but it has constantly struggled to make the kind of profits it needs off of them. Despite attempts to reshuffle to shift the smartphone group’s fortunes, it continues to not be such a great for Sony, with upper management now looking to remedy the losses with a rather ...

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T-Mobile updates will give select phones new LTE band support

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

For as good as your cellular provider might be right now, who wouldn’t want their service to be a little better? Networks have several ways they can go about improving their coverage, from adopting new wireless standards like LTE, to building more towers in congested areas. But maybe one of the most substantial upgrades a carrier can make is adding support for new frequency bands. T-Mobile’s in the middle of doing just that, and owners of certain smartphones will see their devices updated to support this additional band coverage in the months to come.We’re talking about a ...

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Sony’s latest Xperia Z3 option goes official

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Where’s the Xperia Z4? Sony fans are eager to check out what the manufacturer’s been able to come up with since last summer’s launch of the Xperia Z3, and after failing to take the stage at CES, we’re now curious if the Z4’s warming up for an MWC debut. And while much of our attention is taken up looking through regulatory paperwork trying to track Sony’s progress towards the Z4’s launch, it’s easy forget that the Xperia Z3’s story is far from over. Beyond just ...

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Purple Xperia Z3 gets leaked, and no, we didn’t mean Xperia Z4

Posted on by Jaime Rivera

Sony has spent the last couple of years re-inventing its approach to smartphones and tablets, and has done so quite elegantly. Ever since the launch of the Xperia Z1 a few years ago, we’ve praised every single one of its

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Sony Xperia Z3 Android 5.0 Lollipop update coming in February

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

Despite being an incremental update to its predecessor, the Sony Xperia Z3 is a great phone, with exceptional performance, awesome battery life, and a build (which you might like or dislike) that makes it resistant to both water and dust. Out of the box, the Sony Xperia Z3 is powered by Android 4.4.4 (with Sony’s own UI on top of it), but that’s about to change soon, according to the manufacturer.At the

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Most exciting things of 2014

Posted on by Anton D. Nagy

As usual, at the end of every year, we’re looking back at what happened over the course of twelve exciting months — that got us a lot of extraordinary products and services. We not only do this because it’s fun and important to recap some crucial events, but also because we usually also look at the future, trying to anticipate what the next year will bring us; and, in order to realistically try to predict things from the future, we need to know what happened in the past.So far, we looked at what we think were the 

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Sony underwater store opens for waterproof Xperia phones

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

It used to be that finding a water-resistant, to say nothing of a waterproof smartphone, was tricky business. Here in the US, anyway, such models were few and far between, though the handset market in nations like Japan was a lot quicker to embrace such features. But in recent years we’ve really seen global availability of waterproof phones take off, as even mainstream flagship models start protecting themselves against wayward moisture. Sony’s found itself at the forefront of this big ...

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Sony teases stock Lollipop on Xperia Z family

Posted on by Stephen Schenck

Listeners to today’s Pocketnow Weekly podcast already know how stricken we are with some of the new features in Android 5.0 Lollipop. While only having had the opportunity to try out the public release on a Nexus 9, our interactions have been so promising that we’re itching for our Nexus 6 to arrive and give us a chance to see what the finished Lollipop has to bring to smartphones. Owners of existing Nexus models are eagerly awaiting for their own Android 5.0 updates to ...

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Sony begins unlocked Xperia Z3 US sales

Posted on by Rithvik Rao

In case you’re in the US and want an Xperia Z3, but don’t want to wait for T-Mobile to release the thing already or buy Verizon’s fancy Xperia Z3v, you’re in luck, as Sony has just kicked off unlocked Sony Xperia Z3 US sales, letting you buy one full price and activate it on a carrier of your choice.Ponying up the $679.99 asking price will net you an unlocked phone that’s compatible with LTE bands on both AT&T and T-Mobile, which ...

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