'One' Thing I Will Definately Be Buying This Year

So it seems I am in the minority here, but I really enjoyed the Xbox Reveal show. Before the show had even finished, the online world was plagued with many slamming the show and Microsoft for not answering the pressing questions that's on many of our minds about the next generation of consoles and instead filling almost the entire hour with very little about gaming at all.

Microsoft in fact chose to show off the new non-gaming features of it's new console, which mainly involved the ability to watch live television, social interactions, and new voice controls.

For me, I really enjoyed this and I really do not understand the backlash Microsoft has received since. Personally I would have found an hour of game previews a complete bore. I know it's going to play games, because it's a fucking games console, and I know what games it's going to play and what they will look like because that's all been posted elsewhere previously. I'm not a huge gamer, but I am looking forward to Star Wars 1313 and Metal Gear Solid Ground Zero. Both of which I have already seen extended game play footage of on YouTube. If Microsoft had spent the hour showing me endless clips I had already seen, then I would have seen reason to start complaining for wasting my time.

I use my Xbox mainly for Movies, TV and Music through the likes of Netflix and Last.fm and so on, so the features shown were incredibly relevant to me and I'm sure many others that do use their console as an all round media device, as it should be, and I welcome the features that were shown and Microsoft's approach at making it 'One' device to rule them all. The days when a games console was purely for games were lost in the mid 90's when the original PlayStation played CD's, so get used to it!

I also enjoyed seeing the next generation of Kinect and some of its new features. Many serious gamers seem to slate the Kinect but its by far the best controller-alternative input method, far superior to PlayStation Move or Nintendo's tablet thing. Having it ship with every console is going to drastically improve the line up of titles available for it, giving the casual gamer a home in the Xbox world as well as giving an interesting edge to more serious games and also just a cool way to navigate around the console.

I think the keyboard warriors of the internet need to sit, chill and think for a just minute that this is a console that wont be ready for sale for at least another six months and since Sony decided this year to hold a special event of their own prior to E3, a trend many tech companies are following recently, I think that put Microsoft in a hard position to follow suit and bring something to the table in a special event of their own when a lot of their product wouldn't be ready till at least E3 in June.

I think Microsoft made a great decision to take the time to show off what non-gaming features they had ready to show off and just because something wasn't mentioned or certain pressing questions weren't answered in that small hour in no way means that it was a complete and final representation of Microsoft's entire new feature set or game plan (pardon the pun). It was simply a show of what was ready.

Critics, news reports and Facebook friends alike have since been quick to publish the worst case scenario of all unanswered questions as cold hard fact without any official statements from Microsoft. It is still unclear as to how the new system will operate, whether it will play pre-owned games or how much it will cost, and until we get any official word on those matters, the world needs to calm it's shit down and enjoy the Xbox One for what it is, a new games console from Microsoft finally after nearly the decade the 360 has been available. I know these matters are important, but with a release so far away and the console still in stages of development, I don't think Microsoft themselves know what the final plans are in order to make official statements about them.

One final thing I wanted to write about is directly towards the live TV features that were demonstrated and something that I saw get a terrible amount of criticism for. It became knowledge shortly after, that a separate box/adaptor would be required in order to make the live TV functions actually work. Again I see this as a positive and in many ways a technological inevitability but yet again, Joe Public's stupidity gets the better of them. I live in the UK, and just off the top of my head and can think of at least 6 different television providers using completely different transmission technology that we have on offer. Freeview, Freesat, Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, BT Vision, all using either terrestrial, satellite or cable systems. To have just one box that would be compatible with all these systems, for every country the Xbox will ship to, would be both horrendously costly and require the Xbox itself to be much larger than could comfortably fit on a shelf. Bare in mind also the people that might not be interested in this function, it makes it much more viable to supply a separate box for the TV provider you have to keep the cost of the Xbox down and save from forcing people  into paying more for stuff they might not use.

Putting everything else aside though, love or hate what Microsoft did or didn't do in their event, at least they showed us what the fucking thing looks like unlike Sony!

A New Xbox Is Almost Upon Us

Almost exactly three months since Sony's live unavailing of their PlayStation 4, Microsoft is set to announce their new games console tonight at 18:00GMT which you can watch live right here at the bottom of this post.

I for one am a huge Xbox fan, I much prefer it to the PlayStation for many reasons and after Sony's rather disappointing PS4 event, with the exception of at least one cool game demo, it wont take much for Microsoft to wow me once again.

Against the PS3, the Xbox 360 has by far the best online experience including apps for movies and music, a better selection of games including indie titles, a much better controller as well as Kinect which is far superior to PlayStation Move. This as well as other little things like being able to charge my phone or other device with the USB ports while the console is switched off make the Xbox my console of choice.

This is all of course my own opinion but having said that, all of my close friends are also Xbox users so if I did switch to PlayStation, I wouldn't be able to play with any of them online or swap games.

Watch the live event right here and let me know what you think in the comments...

Sony Xperia Z Review Update & Camera Samples.

First off, I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who read, re-posted and commented on my last blog post, it saw nearly two thousand views and I got some great responses that I just was not expecting! The fact that many more people than I anticipated are taking the time to read my ramblings inspires me to write more so a big thanks to all of you once again.

Ok so onto the topic. I have had my Xperia Z for a while now, long enough to really get to know the device, delve deep and really put it through it's paces and with that I wanted to write another post with a few details about the phone I have learnt since my initial review as a kind of mini update.

Something that has continued to impress me is the camera, I have taken some great shots and I wanted to post some here for you to judge for yourself which I will add at the bottom of the post. My greatest passion outside of technology is skateboarding and taking pictures of sports is always a tricky task with a phone. The burst mode on the Z can take some great rapid shots, but I found them to be of a slightly lower quality when the subject is moving fast. Instead I have discovered by accident a way to take pictures very quickly that takes very clear and sharp photos that I haven’t seen written about elsewhere. I discovered that holding down on the capture button sets up the focus and I can keep it held until I eventually let go and it will take a photo instantaneously which makes timing a shot at that crucial point so much easier.

Also just as impressive is the battery life. In my last post, I tried to dismiss other reviews for slating the battery in the Z and I still stand by that. I have been using the phone without Stamina Mode enabled recently as it disables LED notifications. I expected the battery life to take a hit as a result but I have to say it lasts just as long on a full charge as it did before and that's with having it connected to a bluetooth Smartwatch all day, and bluetooth headphones for a good portion of the day too.

USB Connections

Another great and less written about feature is the ability to mount SD cards as Mass Storage when connected to another device, such as a PC. Android's MTP connection is great in most cases, being able to continue using the phone and access files while connected to a computer is handy, but I have found it to be a lot slower than Mass Storage which can be a pain when moving lots of data at once, which I often do with music as I have a lot of it. I have recently bought a 64GB SD card to be able to hold my entire library and the ability to mount this as Mass Storage instead of MTP while it’s still in the phone makes it a great deal easier than taking it out and using the memory card reader on my laptop. This also gives the device better compatibility with Mac's, TV's and car kits that do not support MTP connections.

Eventually Loads

Missing Album Art

Staying with music, I come to the only new criticism I have with the device. I have been using Google Play Music for the best part of nearly two years since its launch. It’s great, I have all my music in the cloud, can access it anywhere, any time and download it to any device for offline use when needed. The app for Play Music is also great and with the possible exception of the slightly stale UI, as a music player, it’s perfect. After getting a 64GB SD card and having all my music on the phone locally, I have given Sony's Walkman app a try as it works better with the music controls on my Smartwatch. The app looks beautiful and from the outset works fairly well, this however is where the praise will end. The app often seems to forget how much music I have and shows that I have -1 tracks, albums and artists, and then later on it will randomly decide to show me the real numbers. If I choose the shuffle all option, it can often take ages to load album art for the next tracks so if I skip ahead a few songs, I'm left with a large portion of the screen as blank for a few seconds until it eventually loads the artwork. Something that really annoys me is that the app includes artists from compilations in the artist list, which clutters it up with hundreds of one-off artists and mixed artists that I don't need to see, making it much more difficult to select music by that category. Another thing that annoys me is that pressing the back button on the phone just exits the app rather than going to the previous screen as there is another back button within the app itself and this often leads me to close the app by accident. The absolute worst thing about the app though is that it does not support gap-less playback. That on it's own is just simply unacceptable for a music player from a company that many would consider to be pioneers in portable music. I really hope Sony can address these issues in an update as I would like to continue using the app but for now I have gone back to Google Play Music.

Incorrect Library Information 

All in all though I’m still incredibly impressed with this phone and even with spending lots of time playing with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One at work, the Xperia Z still comes out on top for me and I still recommend it to anyone looking at a new phone right now. It's incredibly reliable and works flawlessly each and every time i need it.

So here are some of the camera samples for those interested, all have been taken with the Superior Auto mode and are completely unedited. Click to see larger images:

Hope you enjoyed this post and I have some non Xperia Z related stuff coming soon as i fear that lately I'm just running this into a Sony blog! For now though, tech off.