Developer World

You’ve all been able to develop app extensions for SmartWatch and Smart Wireless Headset pro for a while with the old Smart Extension SDK, but now we have replaced this with the new Sony Add-on SDK. So far, hundreds of apps have been created or extended to work with these devices. Read on for a walkthrough of the most useful facts and tips, for those of you looking to develop an app for SmartWatch and Smart Wireless Headset pro with the Sony Add-on SDK (and learn more about the SmartWatch update being released today!).

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Do you have an app or service around music? Or maybe you run a music store app, an artist information site, an artist oriented app, a fan site or something similar? Then you can develop an app extension for “WALKMAN” music player, using the Music Infinite API available in the Sony Add-on SDK that was launched last week. In the “WALKMAN” music player app, the Infinite button can be used to access related information, content and services about the song or artist currently being played.

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One of the awesome features you’ll find in the recently announced Sony Xperia Z is its 5” screen, which boasts a display density of 440 dpi, and falls into a new class of screen called xxhdpi. With more and more xxhdpi devices coming out, it’s important to make sure you have configured your app’s Android manifest not to exclude such high density screens. Otherwise you might find that your app isn’t showing up on Google Play™ when searched from these devices. Read on to learn what to do, and what not to do, to support xxhdpi screens.

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Today we are happy to announce our new Sony Add-on SDK, which unifies some of our most innovative APIs for Sony Xperia™ smartphones, tablets and Smart Accessories. With the Sony Add-on SDK, you can develop apps for SmartWatch and Smart Wireless Headset pro, or you can develop Small Apps and IR remote sensor enabled apps. You can also develop apps for the infinite button in the “WALKMAN” music player, which is available on most Sony Xperia™ devices. All of these options are available in one package to improve the overall ease of use and developer experience! Learn more about how you can get more visibility for your app after the jump.

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Earlier this week, Sony and Telefónica announced in a joint press release that we are evaluating the Firefox operating system for mobile phones. To show you our current progress, we now also provide an experimental version of the Firefox OS software for Xperia™ E, so that advanced developers can try it out and so that we can get valuable community feedback. In this article, we give you the background of Firefox OS, instructions how to flash Firefox OS on Xperia™ E, as well as an introduction to how to start developing applications for Firefox OS.

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A few weeks ago, we highlighted LTE coverage for Xperia smartphones to let you know which devices had LTE support and the regions which generally offered LTE service. Now, we’d like to share with you the next step in the evolution of LTE – making voice calls over LTE, which we’re currently demonstrating at Mobile World Congress. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) gives you telecom-grade voice functionality over IP while keeping the high speed data connection. Read on as Sony connectivity engineers, Daniel Lönnblad and Pär Olsson, share their VoLTE expertise.

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Today, we’ve officially announced the global availability of Xperia™ Tablet Z, the world’s slimmest LTE tablet. This premium HD tablet sets new standards for tablet thinness, weight, and water-resistance. Measuring only 6.9mm and weighing under 500g, it’s the thinnest and lightest LTE tablet available. And it has the highest levels of water resistance (IP55 & IP57) ever delivered in a tablet. Xperia™ Tablet Z is also the first tablet to run on the Qualcomm® quad-core Snapdragon™ S4 Pro processor. Read on to get the full specs for Xperia™ Tablet Z.

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We are always striving to be as fast as we can with making the open source archives available after a software build has been released. Now, as we have released our first Jelly Bean SW for Xperia™ T, Xperia™ V and Xperia™ TX, we have seen quite a few requests for the latest open source archives – both for the Jelly Bean release for Xperia™ T, Xperia™ V and Xperia™ TX (SW build 9.1.A.0.489) and for the Xperia™ Z archives (SW build 10.1.A.1.350) for the Japanese launch. Read more about Xperia™ open source archives after the jump.

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As our smartphones become more powerful, they can do more advanced things that previously required a high-end PC. One way to make use of the robust processing power of your smartphone is Computer Vision, which basically lets you use the powerful CPU in modern smartphones to interpret the images captured through the camera. The best approach to using Computer Vision on Android is through library called OpenCV. Check out our new Open CV tutorial where Erik Hellman, research engineer at Sony, explains more.

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Developer World is Sony’s main hub for Android™ developers, and in addition to handy tutorials and the latest technical news, don’t forget that we also have valuable developer tools to help you in many stages of app development, whether you’re working on a Sony tablet, smartphone, or a mobile accessory. The BacklogTool, ChkBugReport, and XAppDbg are also open sourced, so you can modify these tools to suit your own development needs. Read further to get a quick summary of some of the tools available.

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