Las Vegas: It hasn’t been even a year since Sony announced it was taking sole ownership of Sony Eriksson, but during those nine months the company as catapulted to the number three position in global smartphone sales, moving past both Blackberry and HTC.
It’s a “small” third place, considering the global dominance of Samsung and Apple, said Stephen Sneeden, a product marketing manager for Sony Mobile Communication in the USA, but he said the company is intent on increasing its market share by offering the latest technology in its devices.
The latest phone, the Xperia Z, one of the few smartphones launched at this year CES in Las Vegas, was design “so that it would be recognised on first impression as a premium product, especially by tech mature consumers.” Sony is calling the Xperia Z a super phone.
To that end, Sneeden says, the company is focusing on four areas — design, display, camera and connectability. A number of feature include the ability to “upgrade” lower quality video, primarily by reducing “noise” and adjusting contrast in real time, and improved colour management. He admits it won’t turn standard definition into high definition, but a demonstration at the Sony booth at the CES show does how considerable improvement in the video quality.
The Xperia Z has also been physically built to be more durable, he said. The phone now includes non-reflective glass on the front, back and sides of the phones, all of which included a shatter proof coating. All the ports on the phone have also been discreetly recessed into the phone’s body, and the rubber covers over the ports do not protrude. The end result is a sleek phone that is water resistance to 3 feet for 30 minutes.
The camera includes HDR, short for high dynamic range imaging, which is designed to give proper exposure, regardless of motion or lightening conditions. The phone also includes a “burst” mode, that allows users to take an endless stream of pictures (limited only by the device’s storage capacity) at 10 pictures per second at a resolution of 9 megapixels.
The phone is expected to hit markets in March.
