Category Archives: Blog post

The new Xperia Tablet Z and its smartphone equivalent, Xperia Z, are the latest Sony products that include Small Apps and IR remote sensor functionality. If you’re ready to start developing your own Small Apps or your own IR remote sensor-enabled apps, you’ll want to do so using the new Sony Add-on SDK. Read on for a quick look at how you can get your development started right away!

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You’ve all been able to develop app extensions for SmartWatch and Smart Wireless Headset pro for a while with the old Smart Extension SDK, but now we have replaced this with the new Sony Add-on SDK. So far, hundreds of apps have been created or extended to work with these devices. Read on for a walkthrough of the most useful facts and tips, for those of you looking to develop an app for SmartWatch and Smart Wireless Headset pro with the Sony Add-on SDK (and learn more about the SmartWatch update being released today!).

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Do you have an app or service around music? Or maybe you run a music store app, an artist information site, an artist oriented app, a fan site or something similar? Then you can develop an app extension for “WALKMAN” music player, using the Music Infinite API available in the Sony Add-on SDK that was launched last week. In the “WALKMAN” music player app, the Infinite button can be used to access related information, content and services about the song or artist currently being played.

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One of the awesome features you’ll find in the recently announced Sony Xperia Z is its 5” screen, which boasts a display density of 440 dpi, and falls into a new class of screen called xxhdpi. With more and more xxhdpi devices coming out, it’s important to make sure you have configured your app’s Android manifest not to exclude such high density screens. Otherwise you might find that your app isn’t showing up on Google Play™ when searched from these devices. Read on to learn what to do, and what not to do, to support xxhdpi screens.

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A few weeks ago, we highlighted LTE coverage for Xperia smartphones to let you know which devices had LTE support and the regions which generally offered LTE service. Now, we’d like to share with you the next step in the evolution of LTE – making voice calls over LTE, which we’re currently demonstrating at Mobile World Congress. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) gives you telecom-grade voice functionality over IP while keeping the high speed data connection. Read on as Sony connectivity engineers, Daniel Lönnblad and Pär Olsson, share their VoLTE expertise.

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As our smartphones become more powerful, they can do more advanced things that previously required a high-end PC. One way to make use of the robust processing power of your smartphone is Computer Vision, which basically lets you use the powerful CPU in modern smartphones to interpret the images captured through the camera. The best approach to using Computer Vision on Android is through library called OpenCV. Check out our new Open CV tutorial where Erik Hellman, research engineer at Sony, explains more.

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Developer World is Sony’s main hub for Android™ developers, and in addition to handy tutorials and the latest technical news, don’t forget that we also have valuable developer tools to help you in many stages of app development, whether you’re working on a Sony tablet, smartphone, or a mobile accessory. The BacklogTool, ChkBugReport, and XAppDbg are also open sourced, so you can modify these tools to suit your own development needs. Read further to get a quick summary of some of the tools available.

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App developers, have you ever wished that you wouldn’t have to rebuild and run your application to try out every small change you’re making? Sony’s XAppDbg tool (eXtra Application Debugging tool) lets you try out different parameters without the need to rebuild the code for every change. And it’s open source! Read on as Pál Szász, who developed the tool, explains more!

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LTE networks are getting more and more common, allowing you to browse the web instantly, stream content, or download movies at high-speed. You’ll find LTE support in a number of Xperia™ smartphones, all the way from the just announced Xperia™ Z to the Xperia™ ion. Each device has a particular range of LTE bands, with corresponding regions that support the service. Read on to get the full list of LTE-enabled smartphones, supported bands, and the available countries where you can use LTE.

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Have you ever tried to shoot a video of a scene that has a strong backlight, like when a person stands in front of a window or direct sunlight? Well, then you will know that it can be almost impossible to get the right exposure of all parts of the picture. Now with the HDR function of the Exmor RS™ image sensor in the new Xperia™ Z, you can get great videos and photos even in these high contrast scenes. For our implementation of HDR video, we use different exposures on every two lines of pixels, to create an optimal result, with really good contrasts. Read on as we explain more how this works!

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