Sony Xperia Z3, Z3 Compact: US Availability

Sony’s latest flagship devices, the Z3 and Z3 Compact were put up for pre-order in the US last month through Verizon and T-Mobile, and they only recently started shipping. Following the pre-orders, Sony has now released its flagships in the US through the Sony Store, in anticipation for Black Friday, which is bound to bring with it some great deals.

Sony Xperia Z3 Pricing

Right now, the Sony Xperia Z3 unlocked version is available for $679.99, no strings attached. It’s currently available in five body colors: white, silver, green, copper, and black, and bears the latest operating system: Android 4.4.4 KitKat. The device is set to be updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop pretty soon, but there’s nothing certain at this point in that regard. Sony’s Xperia Z3 is one of the strongest devices this year in terms of hardware, and we’ll explain why in a brief moment. The South Korean tech company has always paid attention to a multitude of customers, which is why the Z3 release was closely followed by the Compact version.

Xperia Z3 tech specs

Let’s take a quick look at the Sony Xperia Z3 tech specs, so we can get a better idea why it’s such a popular device. Sony’s flagship comes equipped with a 5.2-inch 1080 x 1920 pixel 424 ppi IPS LCD display, a 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor, an Adreno 330 GPU, 3GB of RAM, and 16GB of native storage, expandable using an external microSD slot. Other tech specs include a brilliant 20.7MP primary shooter and a very powerful 3,100mAh battery, which promises a very long battery life before requiring a recharge.

So far tech enthusiasts have shown huge interest in Sony’s flagship, and we’re curious if this release will sell a lot of units, considering most people are saving up their money for Black Friday. Either way, Sony should brace itself for a good profit this quarter, particularly after November. The Xperia series is currently one of the most popular, because Sony has always focused its design philosophy towards a wide range of people.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 Price Cut off to $299.99 at Sprint

Samsung officially introduced the Galaxy Note 4 on September 3rd during their Unpacked event held at IFA Berlin. Soon after the Note 4 announcement, most major US carriers revealed their intentions to have the new Samsung high-end phablet in their portfolio.

It’s not uncommon to see big carriers offering a popular smartphone at the same price with a two-year contract. Anyway, while AT&T and Verizon have listed the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 at $299.99 on-contract, Sprint had it at $349.99. Well, until today, as Sprint has cut off the price of the device to $299.99 with a two year contract, aligning it to the ones of AT&T and Verizon.

Anyway, the other price options for the Galaxy Note 4 remained untouched at Sprint. You will also be able to get your hands on the device for $0 down and split the payment in 24 monthly fees of $30, or you can get it at $720 no stings attached. The 5.7-inch Quad HD smartphone is currently available for pre-order at Sprint and it will start shipping October 17th.

I remind you that Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 boasts about a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display with 1440 x 2560 resolution and a pixel density of 515 ppi, while being underpinned by a Snapdragon 805 SoC based on four Krait 450 cores clocked at 2.7 GHz and an Adreno 420 GPU. The device is also equipped with 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of native storage, 3,220 mAh battery, 16 MP primary camera with optical image stabilization, phase detection autofocus, and 4K video recording support, and a 3.7 MP user-facing shooter with Wide Selfie. Connectivity-wise it brings LTE, Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy, NFC, infrared port, and microUSB 2.0. It runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat out of the box with TouchWiz UI on top of it, while integrating a rear-mounted heart rate monitor and a fingerprint sensor embedded into the Home button.

If you pre-ordered the Galaxy Note 4 from Sprint before the price was cut off, now would be a great time to cancel your pre-order and re-order it. You can check out the new price on Sprint’s website here. You can also pre-order the Sprint Note 4 at $299.99 from Amazon.

Samsung Galaxy S5′s Cousin, Galaxy A5 Caught on Camera

Samsung Galaxy S5′s Cousin, Galaxy A5 Caught on Camera

The hype from IFA is starting to die down as fans are now focusing on Samsung Galaxy Note 4′s release (October 17th). The tech giant has surprised us recently with a set of leaks confirming a new device, the Samsung Galaxy Alpha 5, referred to as SM-A500F in the leak. The device is supposed to be part of a series of three upcoming Samsung Galaxy A gadgets, and will come with a unique body which is not metal or plastic, but rather, a material that feels cold. The information comes from SamMobile, known to provide trustworthy leaks in the past regarding other devices.

Samsung Galaxy A5 tech specs

Nothing is certain about the Samsung Galaxy A5, but we have some vague information regarding its tech specifications. The gadget sports a 5-inch 720 x 1280 pixel Super AMOLED display, a 13MP primary shooter which should have a very high quality and photo resolution, Galaxy Note 4′s TouchWiz, a Snapdragon 400 processor, a 2,330mAh battery, 16GB of internal storage expandable by an external microSD card, and a 5MP secondary shooter for taking selfies. The device is an elegant rectangular-shaped gadget made out of a new material we haven’t received a name for, just the fact that it’s not metal or plastic. Could it be something that makes the phone invulnerable to dropping and such?

The news is very interesting, because we expected the rest of the quarter to be calm and silent after the Berlin-hosted IFA event where companies announced all their devices. We expect Samsung to make further statements about the device pretty soon, setting a few details straight. In the meantime, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section.

Moto X 2014: 7 Best Features of the 2014 Motorola Flagship

Moto X 2014: 7 Best Features of the 2014 Motorola Flagship

With every new smartphone, there are generally some new features that are announced right alongside it. Even if they aren’t particularly new, each Android smartphone has a list of features that users love and brag about. With the release of Motorola’s latest flagship, we wanted to cover some of the more unique and interesting features for the 2014 Moto X.

Moto X Camera Gesture

With a simple twist of your wrist, you can gesture the 2014 Moto X to activate the camera even without turning it on and unlocking the device. Simply twisting/turning the device from left to right a couple of times will activate the display and launch you right into the camera application. From here, you can quickly take a picture and then lock the display making it very quick and very easy to take a picture.

Moto X Burst Mode

Speaking of cameras, LG advertised their G3 camera to be simple - it allows you to take a picture by just tapping on the display (when the camera application is open). The 2013 Moto X already did this but it also has a Burst Mode. So instead of a single tap on the display, all you have to do is tap and hold the display (while the camera application is open) and it will take multiple pictures back-to-back very quickly. It’s these types of quick features that make the Moto X so simple to use since there’s no need to fumble through any menus.

Moto Voice

You might already know of this feature as Touchless Controls from the 2013 Moto X. Motorola has given it a new name to match the other Moto-named features in the 2014 Moto X. The default activation phrase is ‘OK Moto X’, but you can customize this to just about any phrase you would like. This feature also integrates into other Android applications like WhatsApp, Facebook and even YouTube. You can tell your 2014 Moto X to post a status message to Facebook and it will perform the action without you needing to touch the device at all

Moto Assist

Another one of these new Moto-named features is Moto Assist. You can think of this as a programmable version of Google Now or the LG G3′s Smart Notice feature. Moto Assist will take information like what time it is, where you are and how fast you’re going so that it can give you contextual information based on it. As an example, you can program your 2014 Moto X to go into Silent Mode while you’re sleeping or if you’re in the car and on the way to/from work. You might think this is very similar to what Tasker does, and you’re correct to think that. It does some of the things that Tasker does, but it isn’t quite as powerful. This also means it’s much easier to configure too.

Moto Connect

This is a Motorola application that debuted on the 2013 Moto X. This app will let you pair your smartphone to your computer so that you can control your Moto X from the browser with the Moto Connect extension/plugin. You can do various things like send or receive texts, read the caller ID and other minor things right from the browser while the device is being charged or in your pocket.

Moto Display

Moto Display also debuted on the 2013 Moto X but was called Active Display back then. Since the Moto X uses an AMOLED display, the only battery power used to light up the display is for the individual pixels. So, you could keep the entire display black and only use a few dozen pixels to display some vital information about the time and your active notifications, all without eating up so much battery from lighting up the entire display (like an LCD panel has to). This type of interface is activated when you get a notification, but it also uses the sensors to know if you’ve picked up or turned over your smartphone.

Trusted Devices

We’ll end this list with a feature that is being incorporated into Android L. It’s called Trusted devices and it debuted on the 2013 Moto X as well. I haven’t seen anyone talking about this for the 2014 Moto X, but I assume that it’s still there. You’ll need to go into Settings and then tap on Security. From there, you should see the Trusted Devices option where it will let you pick a paired Bluetooth device. You can do this with any Bluetooth device so that when it’s paired with your Moto X, it will allow you to bypass any security protection you have on your device. This is great for when you have the Moto X paired with your car (or a smartwatch) so you aren’t required to focus on the smartphone to unlock it.

Samsung Preparing 3 New A-Series Galaxy Smartphones, A300 Specs Leak on GFXBench

Samsung Preparing 3 New A-Series Galaxy Smartphones, A300 Specs Leak on GFXBench

Samsung announced its first metal built Galaxy device last month – Galaxy Alpha. The device offers a premium build and a slightly more appealing overall design compared to the other Galaxy smartphones. It was aimed primarily at taking on the Apple iPhone 6 and offers comparable specifications to the latest Apple iPhone. Now Samsung is planning to expand the Alpha family of devices with three new models under development. All three are said to feature similar design and premium metal body as the Galaxy Alpha. The model numbers of the three devices are: SM-A300, SM-A500 and SM-A700. The lowest end model, A300’s specs seem to have been leaked via the GFXBench app.

The leaked details point to a 4.8” display with 960 x 540 qHD resolution display (perhaps S-AMOLED), Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset with Quad-Core 1.2GHz CPU and Adreno 306 GPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage, 8MP rear camera with 1080p video recording, 5MP front-facing camera with 1080p video recording and Android 4.4.4 KitKat operating system. These specs are pretty decent and could mean Samsung is looking to position this one as a premium mid-range handset. This is also the first time that Samsung would be using a 64-bit compatible Qualcomm Snapdragon chip.

According to SamMobile, the A300 as well as the other two models are expected to be released by the end of the month. It does seem like a good idea for Samsung to offer premium built smartphones at different price points with these three A-series Galaxy devices. The A300 itself sounds like a very promising phone and the 5MP front-camera will certainly appeal to the youth and everyone else who is crazy about taking Selfie on their smartphones all day. The other two devices still remain a mystery at this point but we expect to learn more about them in the coming days.

Sony Xperia Z3 Launcher And Widgets Ported For All Android Devices Running 4.2+

Sony Xperia Z3 Launcher And Widgets Ported For All Android Devices Running 4.2+

Xperia Z3 was one of the biggest announcements at IFA this Wednesday and its system dump was already been made available on XDA developers website the very next day. Developers have now successfully ported the device’s home launcher and widgets to all Android devices running Android 4.2 JellyBean or later versions. The ports have been developed by senior XDA member Sahaab.

The system dump of the Xperia Z3 was shared by XDA member IanM RS, who shared it on XDA forums on 5th September. The dump included everything from the launcher to apps and wallpapers. The build number of the firmware shared was 23.0.A.2.93. That most likely wouldn’t be the final firmware that would ship with the Xperia Z3 once It starts shipping to retailers by the end of the month.

The port works for both rooted as well as non-rooted devices, so everyone can install the Z3 launcher on their devices and get a feel of the updated Sony Xperia UI. No framework changes are required too, you simply need to remove the previous home.apk from the system/app folder on your phone. Once you’ve done that you can install it as any other apk file. Sony’s Android launcher has been very light right from the Sony Ericsson era, unlike the Samsung and LG launchers. So even if you’re not a fan of Sony’s devices, you should definitely give it a go and try the Z3 launcher.

The Xperia Z3 does not come with vastly different software from the Xperia Z2, but there are some minor differences that have been made. Since the device is not shipping right now and not available for demo either at retail stores, this is probably the only thing you can do while you wait for the smartphone to be available on online as well as brick and mortar stores near you.

IFA 2014: Sony announces its New Xperia Z3 Flagship Smartphone With 2 Day Battery Stamina and Improved Camera

IFA 2014: Sony announces its New Xperia Z3 Flagship Smartphone With 2 Day Battery Stamina and Improved Camera

The wait is finally over! Sony has finally launched their new flagship smartphone – Xperia Z3. The rumors over the past few months suggested it to be quite a boring device but it is actually a pretty interesting smartphone.

Let’s talk about the hardware specifications first. It comes with the same 5.2 inch 1920 x 1080 resolution IPS display with Sony’s Triluminos Display for mobile and X-Reality image enhancement technology. Powering the smartphone is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, clocked at 2.5GHz. There is 3GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage, expandable by a microSD, 20.7MP Exmor RS rear camera, 2.2MP front camera, 3100mAh battery, IP65/68 certified dust and water-resistant, LTE Cat.4 support for up to 150 Mbps download speeds, and Android 4.4.4 KitKat out of the box. The dimensions of the device are 146 x 72 x 7.3mm.

These specs might not sound very different from the Xperia Z2 but actually there are a lot more differences than these specs suggest. The most promising change has to do with the battery life. Sony claims that they have been able to tune all the components of the smartphone to be as efficient as possible to extract the maximum possible battery life. The result of that is said to be a 2 day battery life. That’s right! Sony claims that you can use the Xperia Z3 for two continuous days without having to look for your charger. Even though battery capacity is down by 100mAh over the Xperia Z2, the battery life is said to be quite a lot better. There is also an ultra-stamina mode on board that limits your phone to core functions only like calls and messaging to extract the most out of your battery.

Another area where Sony seems to have concentrated is the camera. You might remember that even though the Xperia Z2 came with a 20.7MP camera, it underperformed as far as the image quality went. Its rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the LG G3 delivered better results even though they have lower resolution cameras. The Xperia Z3 camera sees some major improvements. The maximum ISO has seen a big jump to ISO12800 now, the highest sensitivity in any smartphone to date. The G Lens has also been upgraded and is now 25mm wide lens (27mm on Z2) that allows you to capture wider shots than before. The camcorder also features a new Intelligent Active Mode which analyzes your movements when shooting a video and minimizes blur and shake from videos. The list of camera apps has also been extended, with more to follow soon.

Even though the display packs the same enhancement technologies and resolution as the Z2, the panel itself is said to be brand new and offers the highest brightness of any Xperia yet according to Sony, A contrast enhancement technology has also been adopted to improve sunlight legibility.

Playstation Remote Play is also a big feature on the Xperia Z3. Sony claims the Xperia Z3 (along with other Z3 products) is the only smartphone in the market that allows you to access your PlayStation 4 games from anywhere in your home using a Wi-Fi network. A separate attachment accessory will help connect the PS4 controller to your Xperia Z3 so you can continue playing your game on it and move around the house.

Audio is another area where Sony has achieved some significant improvements. The noise cancellation feature from the Xperia Z2 is retained but you now get DSEE HX (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) from Sony Walkman devices that allows you to enjoy all your music in the highest possible quality. It also comes with Hi-Res Audio supports, letting you enjoy listening to lossless audio files on the go.

Sony has always been the master of good-looking industrial designs, and the Z series line has been testament to that. The Xperia Z3 looks like an evolution of the Xperia Z2 design with much of the same philosophy but with clever new touches being added to make it a more ergonomic smartphone. The bezels have been trimmed and the side bezels are now said to be just 0.2 mm thin. This has allowed the Xperia Z3 to be slightly less wide than its predecessor and at the same time the thickness has reduced from 8.2mm to 7.2mm. Weight has also reduced to 152 grams from 163 grams on the Z2. The materials used are the same though, with double tempered glass and an aluminum frame. The dust and water resistance capabilities have also seen an improvement with the Z3 being IP65/68 certified, it is now water proof up to a depth of 1.5 meters in fresh water.

All Xperia Z3 models appear to be 4G LTE compatible and the handset supports Nano SIM cards. The Xperia Z3 will be available globally this Autumn with pricing details to be revealed at a later stage. Four color options will be offered depending on the market – Black, White, Copper, and Silver Green.

IFA 2014: Sony Launches Xperia Z3 Compact, The Most Powerful Mini Flagship Yet

IFA 2014: Sony Launches Xperia Z3 Compact, The Most Powerful Mini Flagship Yet

Along with the Xperia Z3, Sony also announced the Xperia Z3 Compact today. It is the Mini version of the Xperia Z3 and unlike the Minis from other manufacturers, it retains almost all the features of its bigger brother.

The Xperia Z3 compact comes with a 4.6 inch 1280 x 720 HD resolution IPS display with TRILUMINOS and Live Color LED, Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz CPU with Adreno 330 GPU, 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage (expandable up to 128GB by microSD cards), 20.7MP f2.0 aperture rear camera with 4K video recording, 2600mAh battery, IP65/68 certified dust and water-resistant, LTE Cat.4 connectivity, and runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat.

Sony really seems to have concentrated on the “compact” bit with the Xperia Z3 Compact. Despite packing a bigger display than its predecessor the Xperia Z1 Compact, it has nearly the same dimensions at 127 x 64.9 x 8.6mm. This has been possible mainly by reducing the bezels all around the display. Sony has also been able to fit a larger 2600mAh in a body that is thinner by 0.9mm. Truly impressive.

As we mentioned earlier in the post, Sony has retained most of the big features from the Xperia Z3 on the Z3 compact. The same 2 day battery life is available on the Z3 compact despite the smaller sized battery. It also features the ultra-stamina mode that lets you maximize battery life when you wish to squeeze the maximum out of what little battery life you have remaining by allowing only the core functionalities like making calls and sending text messages. The screen makes use of the same intuitive contrast enhancement technology for sharp viewing in bright sunlight along with an ultra-bright panel.

The camera improvements are all there too. The Z3 Compact also makes use of the new 25mm wide-angle Sony G Lens. The low light sensitivity has been boosted to ISO12800 and there’s a new Intelligent Active Mode to improve stabilization during video recording by analyzing your movements and reducing shake and blur accordingly. Sony’s legendary Walkman prowess has also made its way into the Xperia Z3 Compact with Hi-Res Audio support and DSEE HX (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) to deliver great audio quality. There is also noise cancellation tech built-in that works with compatible Sony noise cancelling earphones. PlayStation 4 Remote Play function lets you play PS4 games on the Z3 Compact’s screen by connecting the PS4 DualShock controller to the phone using an attachment accessory. This is an exclusive feature that is currently available only for the Xperia Z3, Xperia Z3 Compact and the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact.

The Xperia Z3 will launch in autumn this year in four color options – Black, White, Orange and Green. Like the Z3, Z3 Compact will also come in LTE variants only. There won’t be any HSDPA models this time from what we are seeing on the device’s official whitepaper. There is no information on the pricing yet, but we do expect it to be on the higher side initially. But the fact remains that the Z3 Compact is the only sub 5 inch smartphone that can boast of flagship level specifications and a compact size that fits perfectly in the hand.