Sony’s latest top-end smartphone vibrates in time with movie and TV action scenes and video games.
The Xperia XZ2’s rumble tech adapts a feature originally developed for the firm’s PlayStation controllers. It also records “super-slow-mo” videos at a higher resolution than Samsung’s Galaxy S9.
Sony has, however, pioneered other phone innovations in the past – including a 4K screen and waterproofing – only to see its sales still struggle.
In 2017, it was only ranked the 15th best-selling smartphone manufacturer, according to research firm IDC, with a 0.94% share of the market.
“It is very frustrating when we bring something out to the market first, and maybe the competition comes a year later and does kind of the same thing and gets more buzz around it,” acknowledged Sony’s senior manager Adam Marsh.
“We will definitely be improving how we go to market with the product this time to really ensure the consumers understand the experiences that we can offer.”
“The rumble tech is a bit of a gimmick,” commented Ben Stanton from the consultancy Canalys.
“I’ve tried it. It does make gaming more immersive, but I don’t think it works very well in a video context….
Higher-def slow-mo
The XZ2’s other new features centre on its camera.
Last year’s model was the first phone to be able to stretch out 0.2 seconds’ worth of action to create six seconds of footage, in 720p resolution.
Samsung made much fanfare of adding a similar feature to its new phones on Sunday.
But Sony has now trumped that by delivering its 960 frames-per-second footage in 1080p – twice the resolution that its South Korean competitor offers.
Source: BBC
