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Hands-on with Sony Ericsson's LiveDock and 3D Sweep Panorama

We look at some of the new things coming to existing Xperia smartphones, and glimpse the turbocharged Xperia arc S

Hands-on with Sony Ericsson's LiveDock and 3D Sweep Panorama
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When a phone company announces new features, it's fair to assume you'll be expected to buy a new phone.

It's always refreshing to discover that existing customers can benefit too, and Sony Ericsson is exhibiting some PR nous by introducing new accessories and features for existing Xperia phone owners. Anyone with an Xperia smartphone released in 2011 will benefit.

If you've not yet bought one of the many Sony Ericsson smartphones, the company has also launched an updated version of the flagship Xperia arc.

The Xperia arc S looks identical to the Xperia arc, but now comes with white as a colour option. It's identical in terms of hardware, too, bar the processor that has been bumped to up to 1.4GHz from 1GHz, which the phone maker says will speed up web page rendering and camera operation by around 25 per cent.

In case you're wondering, there's a slightly modified version of the Snapdragon processor inside that is designed to run safely at up to 1.5GHz, but we've already seen a standard arc overclocked to a rather frightening 1.9GHz, which could be an option if you're not worried about that little thing called a warranty.

Sony Ericsson LiveDock

First up at Sony Ericsson's showcase event in London was the LiveDock multimedia station. Announced earlier in the year, it's still to get an exact release date or price, but it looks likely to ship in late October at a retail price of £50.

However, we've found that early birds can get a pre-order in at Amazon for just £29.99 with free delivery.

So what's so special about an expensive charging stand for your phone? Well, the clue is in the name. This is an intelligent dock that uses Sony Ericsson's LiveWare feature, so you can programme the phone to trigger an app or function when you dock it, like firing up the web browser or media player.

Every 2011 Xperia smartphone will be compatible once you've updated to the latest firmware, expected to roll out between now and mid-October. This enables the USB On-The-Go feature, which adds a lot more functionality.

Hidden at the back of the dock is a USB port. Here you can connect mice, keyboards, flash drives, or even (separately powered) hard drives. You can also connect USB devices direct to your phone via an adapter, but it's far more convenient to use the dock.

The innovative design of the dock ensures it can work with the myriad differently positioned charging sockets throughout the Xperia range, thanks to a flexible cable that folds away when not in use. It does look a little messy compared to an Apple dock, however.

Finally, handsets with an HDMI output (such as the Xperia arc S pictured here) can output the phone display to a big screen and add the final piece to the jigsaw.

Although not quite as sophisticated as Motorola's ATRIX, with its unique Webtop desktop mode, you can still use a keyboard to enter text and the mouse as another way to operate apps and games. The right mouse button is programmed to work as a 'back' button, while double-clicking will zoom in and out on a web page.

It adds another dimension to any Xperia phone, and there's something else that Sony Ericsson has revealed you'll be able to connect, even though it wasn't shown on the night: a game controller.

We tried unsuccessfully to prod Sony Ericsson to tell us more, but it doesn't take a genius to imagine where the company might be planning to go with this.

With Sony Ericsson claiming to have no plans to release an updated Xperia Play in the near future, yet insisting at the same time that it has plans to expand the number of PlayStation-certified devices, we're guessing that it won't be long before Xperia Play-optimised games may become available to the rest of the Xperia family.

Once you add a game controller and hook up to the big screen, you've got a fairly respectable home gaming experience that everyone can take part in.

We're not saying this will definitely happen, and perhaps we're jumping the gun with our presumption, but what would you do if you were Sony Ericsson?

3D Xperia-nce

The other new feature coming to Xperia handsets is the 3D Sweep Panorama mode. This allows a camera with a single camera sensor to capture 3D images, and is already available on a number of Sony digital cameras.

It works only when you move the camera (hence the Panorama mode), using Sony's clever software to work out the independent left and right views as you move the camera sideways at varying speeds.

Thanks to a Sony 3D TV and glasses, we were able to view the result of the feature on the Xperia arc S, but the effect was a little underwhelming.

In order to display the wider images on a 3D television, the phone scrolls the static image and highlights the obvious flaw: everything moves at the same speed, killing the 3D effect.

The 3D depth is also very shallow, but you can see better results on close-ups, like objects on a table, when the image is static on-screen.

If you're after a proper 3D experience that also includes 3D video recording, your only choices are the LG Optimus 3D or HTC's EVO 3D.

It may not be as good as those dedicated 3D devices, but it's hard to moan about something given to you free of charge.

The 3D Sweep Panorama mode will be part of the over-the-air firmware update that Sony Ericsson will begin rolling out to Xperia smartphones from mid-September to October.

Jonathan Morris
Jonathan Morris
From starting out as a games tester for Mastertronic, Virgin and Sega in the late 1980s, it may seem odd to then ditch everything to write about mobile phones that, at the time, lasted 20 minutes between charges. He always had a hunch mobiles would become quite popular, but possibly didn't realise how powerful (and, ironically, returning to 20 minutes between charges). Jonathan's job is to continue advising on the best hardware to buy, in order to enjoy games that have advanced considerably since those long days and nights testing Double Dragon on the C64.