News - Sony ditching Ericsson brand to make own smartphones in 2012

[HEXUS]

Ericsson branding phased out by mid-2012. Xperia Cloud final goodbye?

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[shaithis]

I guess we will soon find out if it was Sony or Ericsson that made their phones so shoddy!

[crossy]

I guess we will soon find out if it was Sony or Ericsson that made their phones so shoddy!

Sorry - so don't agree with that. I had a SE P800 and that was a good piece of hardware let down by crappy Symbian software. After some dalliances with Nokia phones I came back with an Xperia X10 - again great hardware (and better looking than the iPhone4) but SE dragged their heels over getting a decent Android release on it. From what I hear about the latest Arc S - again sublime design but they've slapped that Timescape monstrosity on it again, which slows it down to a crawl unless you tweak it.

Someone on the SE forums stated that it was Sony folks who did the casing design with Ericsson folks doing the talky bits. In which case can we expect to see the first "Sony" phone as something that looks incredible, but phone performance is pretty so-so?

Actually, as an SE owner looking to move to Samsung, what I'd like to see is some leveraging of the Sony brands. So I want a phone with the camera capability of a basic Cybershot, with the OLED screen from an A840 series Walkman, and the sound capabilities of the latest Walkman's. How about a dual core phone with integrated noise cancellation for headphones (wired or bluetooth).

[shaithis]

Well, agree or not - talk to people who work in handset support for mobile operators and ask them for returns and failure figures!

[AlexKitch]

I still maintain that my K850i was one of the best phones I've ever owned. I fired it up the other day after 3 years in the drawer and it works a charm.

[cheesemp]

I agree with crossy - my x10 has been pretty solid (I drop it regularly). Since they finally got 2.3.3 on it, its been brilliant. Saying that i did disable timescape as it really is awful. I just hope they concentrate on keeping the phones solid as possible not on junk like timescape.

I'm really thinking about a xperia play as my next phone (ICS on sub £150 phone!)

[crossy]

I agree with crossy - my x10 has been pretty solid (I drop it regularly). Since they finally got 2.3.3 on it, its been brilliant. Saying that i did disable timescape as it really is awful. I just hope they concentrate on keeping the phones solid as possible not on junk like timescape.
I'm really thinking about a xperia play as my next phone (ICS on sub £150 phone!)

Hmm, not convinced by the Play - if you're a hardcore gamer then I guess it makes sense though. As you say, at the price that they've fallen too, it's a reasonable deal.

SE seem to be stripping out a lot of their "added value" - strange you can add value and make the result worth less! Joking aside, the "SE Sync" service has been discontinued (because Google's standard offering is just as good - according to SE). There's also been comments that ICS makes overlays like Timescape less relevant and also easier to remove or disable, (yay!). Most comments against SE's software have either been about the lack of updates, or the poor state of Timescape. I'd agree with both.

What surprised me was that SE seemed - at one point at least - to apparently putting a lot of effort into Timescape (certainly based on the PR), whereas I would have thought that a focus on Mediascape (remember Sony is a "media" company) would have made a lot more sense. If Sony can ensure that their phones match (or even exceed) the iPhone as a music/video consumption device, then surely that's an unassailable "unique selling proposition" for them against the likes of Samsung and Motorola?