Sony’s Xperia M2 is a New Android Mid-Ranger

Sony announced the Xperia M2, a 4G-enabled Android smartphone that will likely compete in a new category defined by the Moto G (our review) last year: Mid-range specs with a reasonably low-end price point.

The handset comes with a 4.8-inch qHD display (960×450 pixels) and an 8-megapixel camera capable of shooting full HD (1080p) video. It’s just 8.6mm thin and weighs 148 grams in the hand, and has an industrial design similar to the Xperia Z2 and Xperia Z2 tablet, which Sony also unveiled today.

It’s powered by a quad-core 1.2 GHz Qualcomm MSM8926 (or MSM8226, in some variants) processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage, coupled with a microSD card for up to 32GB of additional space.

An immediate drawback is the software experience, however. Sony’s Xperia M2 runs Android version 4.3 (Jelly Bean) out of the box, which has already been replaced by version 4.4 and subsequent minor updates. While a firmware update is possible, it’s disappointing to see Sony ship a handset with an outdated version of Google’s mobile OS.



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Nokia X Is An 'Affordable Smartphone' Running on Forked Android

The most exciting, and bizarre, of Nokia’s announcements at the Mobile World Congress belonged to the much-rumored Nokia X handset — and a surprise addition of another two peers, the X+ and XL — all of which run an operating system based on Android.

The devices are targeted at the “affordable smartphone” segment of the market and run the Nokia X OS platform — a forked version of Android that includes the Fastlane UI found on Asha devices.

The Nokia X’s hardware itself is aligned with its ‘affordable’ smartphone tag, offering a 1GHz dual-core processor, 4-inch 800 x 480 pixels IPS display and a 3-megapixel fixed focus camera on the rear. There’s also 4GB of on board storage and 512MB RAM.

However, clearly the most notable thing about the device is the Nokia X software platform, which will run many standard Android apps.

In fact, Nokia told TNW that only three APIs have been changed, so if a developer isn’t making use of these, no changes are needed at all.

However, as the Nokia X is not an ‘Android’ device in the truest sense — it doesn’t have Google Play certification — apps need to be loaded onto the device from Nokia’s own app store, which will have a special section for apps that run on devices in the Nokia X family.

In addition to providing largely unfettered access to Android apps, there are also a few exclusive apps like Mix Radio and Here Maps pre-installed on the device.

Other than loading apps via Nokia’s app store, users will also be able to download them from third-party app stores like Yandex or side-load an APK directly onto the device from a computer.


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BlackBerry Introduces The Z3 And Q20

BlackBerry has a couple of new smartphones in the offing, including the first sourced from new strategic partner Foxconn. The first Foxconn BlackBerry is the Z3, a Nokia-like touchscreen smartphone with rounded sides, a 5-inch qHD display, a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon 400 processor, 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of on board storage.

The Z3 is targeted specifically at customers in Indonesia, which is where the phone will launch first. It runs BlackBerry OS 10.2.1, has a 5.5 megapixel rear and 1.1 megapixel front camera, boasts an internal FM radio and will cost only $200 off contract. Basically, it offers what looks like capable hardware running the same OS that BlackBerry offers on its flagship hardware, but for a price that’s bound to be much more palatable to the Indonesian market.

The proof will be in how the new Foxconn device works, however; there’s always the risk that hardware and software are poorly married when so much of the device is in the hands of a third-party partner. But if it succeeds, BlackBerry could have a new weapon in its arsenal to help it shore up losses in some of its strongest device markets. Indonesia is a key market for BlackBerry, but its market share in the country had slipped to 14 percent as of 2013 per IDC, down from a record high of 43 percent in 2011. Much of that ground was ceded to Android, which now enjoys 83 percent share in the market.

The other new BlackBerry revealed today, the Q20, is aimed at a more general audience. It’s a hardware QWERTY smartphone like the Q10 (and its successor, at least numerically) and no specific mention of Foxconn is made in the release describing the smartphone. It has a 3.5-inch touchscreen, which is larger than the 3.1-inch display on the Q10, as well as new hardware Menu, Back, Send and End buttons, along with an integrated trackpad. The addition of a trackpad will come as welcome news to legacy BlackBerry fans, I’d imagine. The Q20 is also said to boast a larger battery, and should ship in the second half of the year. BlackBerry is keeping other details under wraps at the moment.


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This is Google's Project Tango

Google's surprise reveal of Project Tango, a smartphone equipped with a variety of cameras and vision sensors that provides a whole new perspective on the world around it, left us with quite a few questions about how this device actually works and what it's for. Google says the Tango smartphone can capture a wealth of data never before available to app developers, including depth- and object-tracking and real-time 3D mapping. And it's no bigger or more dependent on power than your typical smartphone. We sat down with Remi El-Ouazzane, CEO of Movidius, the company that developed the technology in Tango, to get a better idea of what this device can do and what it means for applications of the future.

Movidius has been working on the technology behind Project Tango for the past seven years — it's developed the cameras, sensors, and processing chips required to give a smartphone the same level of computer vision and tracking that formerly required much larger equipment. In fact, El-Ouzzane says the technology isn't very different at all from what NASA's Exploration Rover used to map the surface of Mars a decade ago, but instead of being in a 400-pound vehicle, it fits in the palm of your hand.


The phone is equipped with a standard 4-megapixel camera paired with a special combination RGB and IR sensor and a lower-resolution image-tracking camera. Those image sensors give the smartphone a similar perspective on the world as you and I, complete with spatial awareness and a perception of depth. They feed data to Movidius' custom Myriad 1 low-power computer-vision processor, which can then crunch the data and feed it to apps through a set of APIs.


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BBM coming to Windows Phone

BBM is coming to Windows Phone. Nokia's Stephen Elop announced at his company's Mobile World Conference 2014 press event that the popular service will be available to Windows Phone users, but did not give a specific launch date. The instant messenger app first went multi-platform last year, when it appeared on iOS and Android in October.


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