Sony has introduced its first 2020 smartphone, in the form of the entry-level Sony Xperia L4. As you'll see from the headline, one of the most notable new ‘features' as an Xperia fan, is that this is the first Xperia smartphone with a notch. We thought that by now we had ridden out this fad, given that we've seen phones with notches since 2017.
Sony has been collapsing all of its Sony Mobile properties into the parent company for a while now. Sony has already announced that ‘Sony Mobile Communications AB' will close, and we've seen that the Sony Mobile Talk Forums will also close, with users redirected to the generic Sony support forums.
Sony has officially pulled out of making an appearance at the MWC 2020 trade show, which is being held at the end of this month in Barcelona. Sony's exit follows a number of other manufacturers including LG, ZTE, Ericsson, Nvidia and Amazon, who will also not be attending due to the increasing health risks around coronavirus.
Sony's design heritage is unquestioned, the company has picked up a number of design awards over the years, including for its Xperia smartphones. This year is no different as Sony has won a 2020 iF Design Award for the Xperia 1, the company's flagship smartphone from last year. Other recent winners include the Xperia XZ3 and the Xperia XZ1, which won a Gold award.
Sony has published its fiscal Q3 FY20 results, relating to the last calendar quarter of 2019. Sony has finally stem the quarterly decline it saw in Xperia shipments over the prior year, it reported Xperia shipments during the quarter was 1.3 million units. This makes it the highest selling quarter during calendar 2019, although given the decline we've seen over the last couple of years, this bounce is all relative against some very weak numbers.
However, we get that not everyone is so tech savvy where they can distinguish a suspicious website from a legitimate one, which is why companies like Google are trying to do their part as well. Google has recently announced in their next update to Chrome (coming this April), they will start warning users of insecure downloads.
According to Google, “File types that pose the most risk to users (e.g., executables) will be impacted first, with subsequent releases covering more file types. This gradual rollout is designed to mitigate the worst risks quickly, provide developers an opportunity to update sites, and minimize how many warnings Chrome users have to see.”
Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. franchise contains video game characters from a variety of games and publishers. Now, we imagine that Nintendo probably has a ton of ideas as to what kind of characters they want in the game, and that they might not necessarily be successful with all their requests.
One of those unsuccessful requests is apparently Sora from Kingdom Hearts. This is according to a recent episode on the Kinda Funny Gamescast where former Game Informer editor, Imran Khan, claimed that Nintendo had approached Disney and asked if they could have Sora in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
One of the problems Japan is facing is the problem of train gropers, who typically take advantage of the fact that Japan’s trains can get insanely crowded and they use that to their advantage to molest and grope their victims. Unfortunately, there is not much one can do about it as trains can be too crowded to correctly identify the groper.
Plus, due to the nature of trains, the groper can always easily hop off the next station and disappear. However, Japan Railways (JR East) has come up with a new app that will help the victims out. Whenever the victim thinks that they might have been groped, all they need to do is launch the app and tap the button, after which it will send a message to the train’s conductor.
Ever wanted to play a PlayStation game from your Nintendo Switch? If you do, then you might be interested to learn that there is a small, small possibility that Sony’s PlayStation Remote Play could be arriving on the Switch. This was hinted at in a survey shared by Redditor YouRedditHereFirst.
According to the post, they received an email survey from Sony regarding the Remote Play feature. It asked participants about their thoughts of the feature arriving on non-Sony devices like the Xbox One or the Nintendo Switch, and it also asked them their thoughts on the feature for non-gaming devices like the Apple TV or Android TV.
Sony's 2019 mid-rangers, the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus have received a new firmware update that moves the build number from 53.0.A.14.28 to version 53.0.A.14.47. This is a minor update that adds the 1 January 2020 Android security patch. It's only a small update, with no other changes noted. If you've updated please let us know your impressions below.
As it turns out, those rumors are wrong yet again. This is according to Nintendo’s CEO and President Shuntaro Furukawa who said that the company has no plans to launch a new Switch model in 2020. While Furukawa acknowledges that the Switch is in the halfway through its hardware lifecycle, he believes that they can still get more out of the current model instead of releasing a new one.
According to Furukawa, “According to the conventional wisdom for dedicated video game platforms, Nintendo Switch should be entering the midway phase of the hardware lifecycle. But we believe we have built a foundation on which we can pursue further growth opportunities for Nintendo Switch.”
According to a recent report from Fuji Rumors, it seems that the upcoming Fujifilm X-T4 could come with a flip-out selfie display. As it stands, Fujifilm’s X-T series comes with a display that can only tilt one way, but it looks like with the X-T4, Fujifilm might introduce a flip-out display that can also double up as a selfie display.
If you’re wondering why this sounds familiar, it is because this seems like a feature that Fujifilm will be introducing to more than just one camera this year. Previously we had heard a rumor that the upcoming X100V could also sport a two-way flip-out display, and with this new rumor, it seems that this is a feature Fujifilm wants to bring to more of its cameras this year.
For the longest time ever, Nintendo resisted making the jump to mobile. The company had their own reasons, but it seemed to fly in defiance of the market and how more developers were starting to treat mobile as a serious gaming platform. The company has since made the shift and it looks like it has paid off.
According to the latest figures from Sensor Tower (which are no official, by the way), it seems that Nintendo’s decision to start developing mobile games has paid off in a huge way. The report claims that to date, the company has made a whopping $1 billion from games on both iOS and Android devices.
For those shopping about for a new compact camera, Fujifilm’s X100 series is actually a pretty popular choice amongst photographers. In fact, if the rumors are to be believed, Fujifilm is working on a new model in the form of the Fujifilm X100V and whose specs were recently leaked on Twitter by Nokishita.
In terms of the megapixel count, we’re looking at a 26MP APS-C X-Trans CMOS 4 sensor where it will come with a 23mm lens that sports an aperture of f/2.0. This effectively makes the X100V pretty similar to its predecessor, the X100F, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as a 23mm lens does make it rather versatile.