!!!....Electronics world....!!!

Nearly hidden away at  CES  was a $149 Sony  SmartWatch  (due in March) that doubles as a Bluetooth command center for  Android phones . Featuring brushed chrome edges, the 1.3-inch OLED (65k color) touch screen features Bluetooth 3.0 and is compatible with Android phones from Sony, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and others. You may remember its predecessor, the  Live View  accessory that Sony Ericsson released in late 2010. The dust and splash proof SmartWatch is essentially the same story. The updated version is sleeker in appearance (and about 0.3-inches thick), has an accelerometer, can vibrate, and will launch with a colorful swatch of wristband accessories. A black wristband and wristband adapter is included. In my brief experience with the device, it was responsive and attractive. Hitting a button displays the time, which you can then tap to reach the other apps. An option for continuous time display would probably cause the battery life t...

                                                           The SmartDock lands in 2Q 2012. The 4G LTE-equipped  Sony Xperia Ion  is a nice handset, but what makes it truly powerful is the little known  SmartDock accessory. Aside from the usual role of charging the Ion, it also has several features worth looking at. For example, like with several other  Android  smartphone docks out there, an HDMI port mirrors your phone's display on the TV. You can see in our hands-on picture that there's a simple interface for browsing among content and features. Certain TV remotes will also be able to control media playback, presumably through HDMI-CEC. Perhaps what's most interesting is the ability to plug up to two USB devices into the SmartDock, which can support a mouse and keyboard. That certainly could be a nice bac...

Sony had a strong showing during the busy holiday shopping season, the company announced last night.                            Between November 21 and January 5 in Japan and Asia, and November 21 and December 31 in North America, the company sold 6.5 million PlayStation  hardware units worldwide. That figure is made up of sales of the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation Portable, and PlayStation 2. Sony's PlayStation 3 sales were especially strong, hitting 3.9 million units worldwide during the shopping season. Sony also announced that it sold 500,000 units of its new portable, the PlayStation Vita, across Japan and Asia. And although that device is replacing Sony's PSP, the company said that the last-generation portable was still able to reach 1.6 million unit sales during the shopping season. Although Sony didn't announce PlayStation 2 sales, some simple math reveals the company likely sold about 500...

                    Sony has its eye on cranking up TV screen resolution. The electronics and entertainment giant kicked off its  CES  press conference this evening by unveiling a prototype "Crystal LED display" that uses miniature light-emitting diodes in place of pixels. The technology, which uses 6 million LEDs mounted on the front of the display, is superior to LCD and plasma and promises "super contrast and superwide color gamut," Sony CEO Howard Stringer told those assembled. While Sony has this 55-inch prototype on display at the conference, it is nowhere near production or consumers' hands. (CNET staffers at the show are going to give it a look and report back on what they think of it.) Continuing on the theme of "cutting-edge" resolution, Stringer unveiled a collection of 4K upscaling Blu-ray player featuring the emerging digital film standard produces a resolution four times that of HD for sharper contrast and ...

According to a report in the  Daily Yomiuri Online ,  Sony  is halting development of organic electroluminescence  display panels  for consumers. While Sony will continue selling  OLED  panels to corporate clients, the television manufacturer will only create LED and  LCD panels  for the mass market. Sony first rolled out a model of an OLED for the consumer market in 2007, but the expensive price tag of the  Sony Drive XEL-1 OLED TV  was difficult to fathom compared to LED models at the time. Over the last few years, Sony’s lack of marketing around consumer versions of OLED panels was limited and OLED presence at CES was typically tucked away in a small portion of Sony’s booth. OLED televisions are created by using electroluminescent organic materials and are typically much thinner than  LCD televisions . When activated, the materials emit light and eliminate the need for a backlight in the televi...