Sony owes Xperia owners a refund over faulty water resistance

When you buy a phone billed as water-resistant, you generally expect it to survive accidental dunks. Some Sony phone owners have a very different story, though -- their supposedly resistant phones took water damage that required an expensive fix. If...

Refresh Roundup: week of August 26th, 2013

Refresh Roundup week of August 26th, 2013

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

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Weekly Roundup: Gamescom 2013, Ballmer stepping down, Connecting Cape Town, and more!

The Weekly Roundup for 12032012

You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Daily Roundup: Xperia Z Ultra review, Connecting Cape Town, Gamescom 2013, and more!

DNP The Daily RoundUp

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Sony Xperia Z Ultra review: the best phone you’ll probably never buy

Sony Xperia Z Ultra review the best phone you'll probably never buy

What we're about to describe is the same kind of phenomenon we experienced with 5-inch phones in 2010. If you recall, that year marked the debut of the Dell Streak 5, an absolutely massive smartphone / tablet hybrid for that time. Fast-forward to 2013, when 5-inch screens are the norm and 6.44-inch displays are now considered too unwieldy. Such is the case with the Sony Xperia Z Ultra, which borrows many traits from the smaller Xperia Z while taking on a flatter shape. Basically, Sony turned the old Z into a plate phone. As it happens, we got a chance to play with one thanks to our friends at Negri Electronics, an online retailer in the US that sells the Z Ultra's baseline model for about $675. So is the phone comfortable to hold? Does it make more sense as a tablet? And does the Ultra have any redeeming traits outside of its size?%Gallery-slideshow72858%

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Sony names devices that will (eventually) see Android 4.3

Sony confirms Android 43 is coming to its flagship devices

With Android 4.3 being less than 24 hours old, it's nice to see manufacturers already addressing concerns about whether all those under-the-hood tweaks will reach their devices. On Sony Mobile's website, the company confirms that the Xperia Z, Xperia ZL, Xperia ZR, Xperia Tablet Z, Xperia SP and Xperia Z Ultra will get Android 4.3, though a concrete timetable hasn't been provided. Furthermore, if you own an Xperia ZR or Tablet Z, then consider yourself lucky, because you'll see Android 4.2 hit your device next month, making the wait for 4.3 that much more bearable. So yes, a Nexus might get its updates quicker, but can it receive them in the bath?

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Source: Sony Mobile

Sony Xperia Z Ultra hands-on redux: benchmark and camera preview

Sony Xperia Z Ultra handson redux previewing its camera and benchmark performance

You may have already read our Sony Xperia Z Ultra hands-on last week, but since then we've also been able to spend a tiny bit more time with a pre-production unit (with firmware build 14.1.B.1.277). Instead of going over again how hilariously large this 6.4-inch, pen-friendly phone is, this time we'll focus on some early benchmark results, camera performance and Sony's very own UX features.

As you'll see after the break, many of the benchmark scores aren't too far off from what we saw on the MDP phone with the same Snapdragon 800 SoC, and the final units should be optimized with higher numbers. While we didn't manage to get CF-Bench and Quadrant running on the phone, the higher-than-before 3DMark score did cheer us up, meaning either Sony or Qualcomm's managed to fine tune the latter's new Adreno 330 GPU.

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Sony’s Jun Katsunuma on the inspiration for Xperia Z Ultra’s design

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After the Xperia Z Ultra's launch event in both London and Shanghai, we had a brief chance to talk to Sony's Product Design Director, Jun Katsunuma, who was present in the latter city. Jun's been responsible for Sony's mobile devices since the Xperia S days, so the transition to the Xperia Z's double-glass design was also under his watch. That said, the newer Xperia Z Ultra isn't simply just an enlarged version of its smaller sibling, as we found out straight from the horse's mouth.

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Xperia Z Ultra makes its way through the FCC

Xperia Z Ultra makes its way through the FCC,

Sony's new mondo handset, the Xperia Z Ultra, was just revealed to the world today, and so it should come as no surprise that the new phone has just received Uncle Sam's seal of approval. That's right, folks, a version of the 6.4 inch device sporting 1,700MHz HSPA and GSM 850/1900MHz radios has passed the FCC's battery of tests. Alas, despite its cellular and dual-band WiFi radios being put through the wringer, there's a dearth of LTE info in the docs, so we're still in the dark as to the bands that the handset's working with. Still, should you wish to know more of the Z Ultras secrets, all the charts and RF readings you can handle can be found in the source below.

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Source: FCC

Sony Xperia Z Ultra: hands-on with a 6.4-inch Android phone (update: video)

Sony Xperia Z Ultra handson with a 64inch Android phone update video

Sony's been explaining the design story behind its new Xperia range at a UK briefing, how it's trying to balance both the dematerialization of tech (touchscreens, gesture interfaces) and a design that's both desirable and beautiful -- and Sony's certainly got the latter down on its new smartphone. The Xperia Z Ultra follows the lines of the rest of the Z series. It has the same "OmniBalance" plane, uniform screen surface, but this time it measures in at 6.4 inches across, but still running at 1080p resolution. Yep, it does feel substantially bigger than the original Xperia Z -- check out our comparison gallery, the new Ultra model dwarfs it. You're looking at a screen width almost identical to a passport and that 6.5mm profile meant we could cram it into our trouser pockets without an issue. It's certainly a bigger device than the likes of LG's Optimus G Pro or Samsung's Galaxy Note II and you're going to have to test it out for yourself to see if you'd be willing to talk into this Xperia like phone -- it's definitely going to catch the eye.

There's also Qualcomm's notable Snapdragon 800 powering the device on a relatively large 3,000mAh battery, while Sony's simplified the design dropping a few of those much-maligned protective flaps, at least on the headphone socket. There are more impressions and a hands-on video after the break!

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