Testing the Xperia Z Ultra: the last of the Sony Xperia Z Series

Sony invited me to Munich and presented its new device, the Xperia Z Ultra. The 6.4 inch smartphone-tablet hybrid and I got to spend some bonding time together during which I tested it out for your reading enjoyment.

The magnetic dock works also as a charger. / © AndroidPIT

Design

Xperia Z, Xperia Tablet Z and now the Xperia Z Ultra. All three devices have one thing in common: the design. Sony calls this ''OmniBalance'' and has put an emphasis on high quality materials and a round power button made from aluminum located on the right side of the device. The front and back sides of the Xperia Z Ultra are fabricated completely from glass while the frame is made from aluminum. Sony only selected plastic for the protective port covering.

The headphone jack is open on the Xperia Z Ultra, that being said, it's still water-proof. / © AndroidPIT

The Xperia Z Ultra is 6.5 inches thin meaning that it's 0.3 mm thicker than the Huawei Ascend P6. Despite its sturdy 6.4 inch display, the entire device feels comfortable to hold thanks to the fact that Sony has made it slightly curved which gives the body's frame a convex form. That being said, the huge hybrid isn't at all optimized for small hands and one-hand operation is out of the question. You'll only be able to stick this into your pant pocket when the latter is big enough for such things.

Not really made for pockets! / © AndroidPIT

Display

For those who don't have a problem with its size, you'll get pumped about the full HD screen which glimmers with lush colors, high brightness and most importantly, great readability on an angle. Even when drastically tilted, the colors don't look washed out and remain quite natural. According to Sony, this is due to their Triluminos technology which is being implemented here in a smartphone for the first time. A few other key traits belonging to this device are the strong background lighting as well as intense color tones.

Watching videos with the Sony Xperia Z Ultra is a lot of fun! / © AndroidPIT

Software

The Xperia Z Ultra is packing Android 4.2.2 as well as Sony's very own user interface. Compared to the Xperia Z, Sony made a few changes: for one, the app drawer which presents an overview of all your installed apps is now shown in a pull-out bar found on the left side. This is used to sort and delete apps. What's more, the colors are also a lot lighter than those on the Xperia Z: the settings have received a white background instead of black and many of the apps have become lighter as well. The same goes for the keyboard which is now significantly flatter and rich in contrast.

App drawer and settings: Sony change the look of the UI in many places. / © AndroidPIT

During the course of my test, everything worked free of glitches and dropouts. It becomes immediately apparent that Sony equipped its new device with the Snapdragon 800, the strongest mobile processor offered on the market right now. The system reacts smoothly and stutter-free at all times.

Stylus Operation

The Xperia Z Ultra can also be controlled with a pen or stylus if so desired. This is quite a novelty in comparison to other stylus devices like the Galaxy Note 8. It functions using an electric high-sensitive touchscreen which reacts to even the smallest change in pressure on the display. This doesn't just work with the finger but also the stylus. In practice it worked quite well, however when you only use the pen, there was a delay of a few seconds.
Sony offers apps for handwriting recognition and sketch drawing where you have the choice of many pens and stamps. All in all the manufacturer offers far less software features as Samsung does with the Galaxy Note, which has been almost completely optimized for S-Pen usage.

A nice pass-time: Sony's App for sketching. / © AndroidPIT

Camera

The test photos that I took with the 8 MP camera included a slight blue nuance, though this could simply be caused by an incomplete software installed on the pre-series device. In terms of screen resolution, there wasn't anything to complain about in my test. I found it a shame that the camera doesn't include an LED flash. When a device's price starts a 780 US dollars, this is simply a standard feature to include.

The LED flash was left out. The NFC logo on the other hand was imprinted onto the body and this time not as a sticker. / © AndroidPIT

Bottom Line

The Xperia Z Ultra completes the Xperia Z line which was explained to me by a Sony rep during the visit. This will be the last device in this series and it's pretty clear that the manufacturer has come up with a worthy last contribution. The one point of criticism that I need to utter is the missing flash, but other than that I was completely happy with the Sony Xperia Z Ultra during the course of my short test. The Xperia Z Ultra should appear in the US market in the third quarter of this year, however no definite price has been decided as of yet. That being said, we can predict it being around the 780 US dollar mark.

The Xperia Z and the Z Ultra in comparison. / © AndroidPIT

Tech Specs

Display	6.4 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixels, 342 ppi, LCD "Triluminos-Bildschirm with X-Reality-Engine"
Processor	Snapdragon 800 (MSM8974), 2.2 Gigahertz, Quad-Core, Adreno 330 (GPU), 2 GB RAM
Camera	8 Megapixel, Exmor-RS-Sensor, Superfast-funktion, HDR
Connectivity	LTE, HSPA+, GSM, WLAN n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, HDMI (MHL)
OS	Android 4.2.2 with Sony UI
Memory	16 GB + microSD
Battery	3000 mAh
Dimensions	179 x 92 x 6.5 mm
Weight	212 grams

Samsung Galaxy Tab Series Coming On July 7

Samsung has announced that the new Galaxy tab series that we reported about previously is coming to the United States on July 7th. The tablets are coming in 7, 8 and 10 inch variants, and are going to be priced at about $199, $299 and $399 respectively. This time Samsung is focusing on more affordable and thin devices which are designed to meet the needs of the mass marketing.

The 10 Inch Version of the upcoming Galaxy Tab 3, which is now available as of now, online and at Brick and Mortar retailers / © Samsung Mobile

Differences in Specs

Each of the upcoming devices has different things under the hood. For the 7 inch variant we are looking at a 1.2 GHz Dual core Marvell chip, for the 8 inch version we are looking at a 1.5 GHz Exynos CPU, and finally for the 10.1 inch version of the series we are looking at a 1.6 GHz dual core chip. The 7 inch version of the series of tablets sports a 1024x600 display while the other ones both have a 1280x800 resolution.

Appearance & Android Version

Despite the differences on what is actually under the hood on the different devices, all of them look like Samsung products and are instantly recognizable as such. The 7 inch tablet will be running Android 4.1 whilst the other two will come running with Android 4.2.

Availability

If you are in the United States you can now pre order your Galaxy Tab 3 devices online at Samsung's own store or at other online retailers such as Amazon and BestBuy now, or if you prefer you can also pre order the devices at actual brick and mortar stores too.
What do you think of the specs that the new Galaxy devices are coming with and will you be buying one of these soon?

HitFox-Incubated Mobile Games Marketing Platform AppLift Raises $13M Series A

As mobile gaming has exploded, it follows that startups helping to feed and in turn feed off the mobile gaming ecosystem are poised for growth. One such company is AppLift, the mobile games marketing platform co-founded and backed by games distribution incubator HitFox, which today is announcing that it’s closed a $13 million Series A round from Prime Ventures.

It plans to use the new funding to invest in its platform and “accelerate” international growth. This will include AppLift staffing up in engineering, other product specialists and business development, adding a further 50 to its head-count by the end of the year. Positions will be filled in its Berlin headquarters and existing offices in San Francisco, Seoul, and Paris — with funds also pegged for further geographical expansion. “We will both hire more people in our existing offices and open new offices, especially in Asia,” HitFox co-founder and CEO Jan Beckers tells TechCrunch.

AppLift’s marketing and monetization platform helps games publishers acquire more users for its games, and in turn generates revenue for affiliates who want to monetize their mobile sites and apps by sending qualified leads AppLift’s way. Its 500+ media partners include the likes of RTL and Closer, while the company is currently partnering with over 80 mobile game publishers, such as King, Wooga and Kabam, who are seeing as much as 1 million “high-quality” installs per month as a result.

In addition, AppLift`s platform is able to track, measure and benchmark the quality of players delivered with regards to retention, virality and, perhaps most importantly, monetization, such as in-app purchases. “Game publishers are able to adjust their spendings for different traffic sources based on the quality of the users they get,” explains Beckers.

Founded in 2012 by HitFox Group, Kaya Taner and Tim Koschella, AppLift attributes some of its speedy growth to synergies with other companies in HitFox’s portfolio, specifically its acquisition of ad2games, a company it notes was already active in “the space of user acquisition”.

Finally, I’m told that from start to finish, the investment from Prime Ventures was closed in under 5 weeks, which is pretty fast for a round of this size. Perhaps as a result, when I spoke to Beckers last week, he was sounding even more bullish than usual. He’d just returned to Berlin from a trip to Singapore — mainly for business, but with a few days vacation — and told me that HitFox and AppLift co-Founder Tim Koschella is now permanently based in Asia, first to grow its Korean office and then to open new offices elsewhere in the region. China, Japan and Singapore are cited as likely candidates to be next.

Meanwhile, Beckers says that two months ago HitFox co-founder Hanno Fichtner, along with his family, moved to the U.S. to strengthen the incubator’s presence across the pond, including hiring more staff stateside.

Chalk this up as another European startup thinking truly global, one long haul flight at a time.

He Likes His Horror Personal And Global Stephen King’s ‘Under The Dome,’ Adapted for a TV Series

LOVELL, Maine — Rosie’s General Store serves breakfast all day, and it’s the type of place where residents of this town of 1,140 will stop in to buy lottery tickets, a loaf of bread or the special jumbo lobster roll. It’s also the inspiration for the Sweetbriar Rose, a diner in Stephen King’s 2009 opus about a small town cut off from the outside world by a mysterious and impenetrable dome.

A television adaptation of that novel, “Under the Dome,” will have its premiere on Monday night on CBS, which was why Mr. King found himself talking one day recently with the real-life Rose about the TV version of her character, one of nearly 70 in his 1,074-page doorstop of a novel. “I told you I want to be taller and thinner,” Rose McKenzie told Mr. King heartily as he ate blueberry pancakes with maple syrup.

“And through the power of narration, you are,” he assured her.

After nearly 100 television and film adaptations of his novels and short stories, Mr. King is used to the Hollywood version of his characters ending up younger and more glamorous than their often-haggard literary counterparts. It’s one of those things he doesn’t try to fight. He has developed a rule about collaborating on adaptations of his work: “Usually my attitude is go all the way in or all the way out, but don’t be a noodge,” Mr. King said.

But he’s being something of a noodge about “Under the Dome.” After reading the script for a coming episode, Mr. King was concerned that in it, Jim Rennie Jr., the degenerate son of the town’s alpha male, says that he scraped his hand while cutting wood with an ax. “I said, ‘Ax and hand, really?’ ” Mr. King said. “I had them change it to hatchet.” A hatchet’s blade is closer to the user’s hand, he explained.

Rather than turn the series over entirely to the producers, as he has with other adaptations to varying degrees of success, Mr. King has stayed involved, and it seems fitting. “Under the Dome” encapsulates the arc of his writing career: Started before he became a published novelist, the book was released 37 years later, when he was so renowned that the e-book version contributed to a price war.

The television series won’t have much effect one way or the other on Mr. King’s reputation as a master storyteller. CBS, by comparison, has more at stake with “Under the Dome,” as it risks shaking up the reliable models for summer television and online streaming.

Not only is it unusual for a broadcast network to introduce a dramatic series in late June, but CBS has broken with network tradition by selling the exclusive digital rights to Amazon. Under the deal struck with the online retailer, Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to stream episodes of “Under the Dome” just four days after they are broadcast on CBS. The deal is the first of its kind for a broadcast network and a Web streaming service and will be a closely watched test.

Beyond reading the scripts, Mr. King has visited the set and occasionally offers advice. He mostly leaves casting, character arcs, plot development and story lines to the executive producers, who include the comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan and Neal Baer, a longtime writer on “Law & Order: SVU” and “E.R.”

The television adaptation inevitably ups the visual ante. In the book, a woodchuck is split in half (“blood squirted and pumped; guts tumbled into the dirt”) as the giant dome violently descends on the fictional town of Chester’s Mill, Me.; in the TV version, a cow is severed through computer-generated effects. The Iraq war veteran and short-order cook who assumes the hero’s role in the book disposes of a dead body in the first episode, hinting at a potential murder plot, not found in the novel, that could muddy his image.

After Mr. King downed Ms. McKenzie’s pancakes and a side of sausage, we headed to Bridgton, a nearby town that inspired the fictional Chester’s Mill. In a gray T-shirt, jeans and black sneakers, he is tall but slight at 65, as if the strong breeze that passed through the quiet town square could knock him over. The weather on this late spring day felt oddly like the sunny fall one he describes as the backdrop of “Dome Day,” which is how residents of Chester’s Mill refer to the day the dome arrived. As he drove, it was hard not to get the feeling that an alien structure could descend at any moment.