Friday, March 06
Mobile World Whole Lot Of Nothing Conference 2015
So MWC was just on in Barcelona. Samsung announced the Galaxy S6, which dropped the very useful replaceable battery, water resistance, and micro SD slot for a shiny case. And a much higher price.
Like all the Xperia devices, it looks like a slab of glass... Because basically, it is a slab of glass. Magical glass.
So MWC was just on in Barcelona. Samsung announced the Galaxy S6, which dropped the very useful replaceable battery, water resistance, and micro SD slot for a shiny case. And a much higher price.
HTC announced the One M9, an incremental update from its predecessors. Not worth upgrading if you have the M8, but a very good phone all around.
Sony didn't have any new high-end phone announcements, which is something of a relief because they've been on a crazy 6-month release cycle. The Z3 and Z3 Compact remain two of the best current Android phones.
But they did have a new tablet - the Z4. In fact, it's just about the only interesting thing to come out of this year's show.
It's a full-size (10.1") tablet, with a 2560x1600 screen, a Snapdragon 810 CPU (2GHz 64-bit quad-core Arm A57), 3GB RAM, 32GB flash, micro SD slot, plus the usual cameras and sensors and speakers and so on. And it's waterproof, like all of Sony's Xperia Z models.
And it weighs 389 grams.
To put that in perspective, the 2012 Nexus 7 weighed 340g, with a screen half the size and a quarter the pixel count. The 2013 model weighs 290g. The two full-size tablets I own, an iPad 3 and a Nexus 10, weigh 650g and 603g respectively.
It looks really nice. But I already have two full-size tablets, and instead I constantly use my Nexus 7. On the other hand, part of the reason I use the Nexus 7 is that it's so much lighter than the big tablets. The 7 is perfect for reading, checking email, and playing Kairosoft games, but it's too small for reading web sites unless they have a really good small tablet layout. It's also kind of slow, with its 1.5GHz Snapdragon 600; the Z4 should be 2-3x faster (depending on the benchmark).
The existing Z3 Tablet Compact is also very nice, coming in at 270g for a 30% bigger screen than the Nexus 7, and a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801. But it's only available here in Australia with 16GB of storage, and that's completely inadequate. 32GB is just enough; 64GB would be ideal.
The existing Z3 Tablet Compact is also very nice, coming in at 270g for a 30% bigger screen than the Nexus 7, and a 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801. But it's only available here in Australia with 16GB of storage, and that's completely inadequate. 32GB is just enough; 64GB would be ideal.
(The problem being that Android no longer lets you install apps to the SD card; all apps, and in some cases - Kindle, I'm looking at you - their content has to be on the internal storage. Well, some versions of some devices running some releases of Android can move some apps to SD card. Which just makes things worse, frankly.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
03:24 PM
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Can you run the Z4 underwater? Like, for photos?
Posted by: kurt duncan at Saturday, March 07 2015 08:02 AM (QKmzp)
2
It's only rated to 1.5m and for fresh water, so not much good for underwater photography.
It's more of a lifestyle thing; I once got just a few drops of water in my Nexus 10 and it died. Fortunately, it came back to life once it dried out, but not needing to worry about minor spills killing your $500 gadget is certainly attractive.
It's more of a lifestyle thing; I once got just a few drops of water in my Nexus 10 and it died. Fortunately, it came back to life once it dried out, but not needing to worry about minor spills killing your $500 gadget is certainly attractive.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, March 07 2015 10:26 AM (PiXy!)
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