Originally Posted by linkinpark875:
“I agree Sony made the Ericsson phones good but remember the t68? That was an Ericsson only phone before Sony so they built on the success of that.
Sony seem a bit lost in the smart phone market. I've used a few and they are rubbish the Galaxy phone is a much smoother device even though I'd probably never buy one.”
Do I remember the T68? Oh yes. Still have it somewhere too! That was a perfect example of Ericsson packing in every bit of tech it could. It even had a feature that could tell you how long you had left on your battery in hours and minutes (a feature that was dropped later because, clever as it was, it confused and angered some users who took the estimation literally despite the fact that increased usage or a long call would make it fall far quicker).
And the P800 smartphone was under development by Ericsson, as a follow up to the R380 World phone, even though it came out branded as a Sony Ericsson phone.
Frankly, Sony didn't seem to offer that much to the joint venture besides its brand, and the (much later - around 2005?) introduction of Sony brands, like Walkman and Cyber-shot.
There were some Japan-only phones, designed by Sony in Japan, but I do wonder what other tech really came from Sony other than effectively licensing the names and logos? I'm talking about the early days of the JV, rather than later on when Sony did start to use its own image sensors and bundled its own accessories (like speakers, headphones etc).
Personally, I think the Xperia devices today are excellent. And that's because there's still a hell of a lot of input from Europe, especially on the software/UI side.
From the Sony side, we have the need to release two flagships a year to appease the Japanese operators that launch 'collections' as if it was the fashion industry. That seems, to me, a great way to annoy consumers who are left with an old phone just a quarter of the way into their two year contract.
Sure, we can argue about the phone still being as good as it was, and that technology always works like that, but it doesn't
have to be that quick. Just look at the fuss over rumours of a more advanced Galaxy S5 coming out in a few months!
But now this is all way off topic, so I apologise.