Are you ready to PLAY? PS4™ Remote Play now available for Xperia™ Z3 series

Following the introduction of Xperia™ Z3 series at IFA in Berlin, Sony Mobile Communications (Sony Mobile) and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCE) have today launched PS4™ Remote Play for Xperia Z3, Xperia Z3 Compact and Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact.

From today, owners of any Xperia Z3 series smartphone or tablet can download the PS4 Remote Play application to start playing their favourite PlayStation®4 games anywhere at home on their smartphone or tablet with the DUALSHOCK®4 Wireless Controller via home Wi-Fi. This latest addition to the PS4 Remote Play family gives gamers even more options to remotely play their PS4 games away from the TV for those times when the TV isn’t available.

As an added bonus, and following the positive reception of PS4 Remote Play for the Xperia Z3 series, Sony Mobile and SCE will be bringing this innovative feature to the Xperia Z2 series in the coming weeks*. Both Xperia Z2 and Xperia Z2 Tablet will soon be able to connect to PS4 and offer PS4 Remote Play so current Xperia Z2 series owners can also get in on the action and connect remotely to their PS4 games. Full details on the release of PS4 Remote Play for the Xperia Z2 series will be announced in the coming weeks.

PS4 Remote Play is also available for PlayStation®Vita and PlayStation®TV, which is rolling out in Europe starting November 14. However Xperia Z3 and Xperia Z2 series will be the only smartphones and tablets to offer this unique gaming experience.

To make PS4 Remote Play even easier, there’s a range of different accessories and ways to get connected and started on the game – whether it’s using the GCM10 Game Control Mount accessory with your Xperia Z3 and DUALSHOCK®4 Wireless Controller or setting up your Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact as a screen on the BSC10 Bluetooth Speaker Dock.

For further details on how PS4 Remote Play works with your Xperia smartphone or tablet, check out the below video or visit www.sonymobile.com/remoteplay.

New Lollipop build for Samsung Galaxy S5 gets showcased

A few weeks ago we brought you images and video showing what an early build of Android L for theSamsung Galaxy S5 looked like.

Since that point, the Korean company's engineers have been hard at work tweaking things and integrating the TouchWiz UI with the new version of Android. And today it's the turn of a newer build of Android 5.0 for the Galaxy S5 to get showcased in all its glory.

  
Android 5.0 Lollipop on Samsung Galaxy S5

Samsung has refined many design bits, as you can see in the first two screenshots above. The device information page still doesn't say the word Lollipop, but the Android version is now listed as 5.0, instead of the "L" we saw last time.

The new leaked build has mostly UI enhancements compared to the old one. A fingerprint lock screen like the one in the Galaxy Note 4 is present, there's a new system font, new animations, a Google Search bar in the Recents menu, the brightness slider in the notification area has a new color, "Interruptions" has been removed from Sound settings, the Gallery has new filters, Contacts has a new search box, and stock apps with Material Design get the colored status bar.

SEL outs a 3-fold 8.7-inch OLED touch display

At the Display Innovation 2014 trade show in Yokohoma City, Japan, Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) introduced an 8.7" Super AMOLED display, which can fold in three. It sports 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution resulting in a pixel density of 254ppi.

SEL introduced a smaller version of the same display measuring 5.9" in diagonal, but it sported 720p resolution and didn't support touch. Now, that's changed an the company uses a c-axis aligned semiconductor for the backplane. The company is debuting a technology combining a top emission type and a capacitive touch panel for the first time.

The 3-fold 8.7" SEL display can be bent more than 100,000 times and the curvature bent it supports is of 2mm and 4mm radius.

There's no information just yet when we can see the display in an actual product. The possibilities are endless and we can see it in future e-readers as well as tablets. An interesting project would be to cover an entire staircase with this type of display, but you'll have to have an extraordinary large amount of cash to burn to pull this off.

Apple iPhone 6 to get a $100 price cut with upcoming promo

The holiday season and Black Friday are upon us, kicking off November 28 this year. The retailers are already working on their promo offers and the Sam's Club one is particularly interesting. It seems iPhone 6 will be one of its hot promotions this year - it will offer it on half the price if you opt to get in on contract.

A leaked flyer for the upcoming promotion reveals Sam's Club will offer the Apple iPhone 6 for $99 for the 16GB flavor with a two-year contract. The 64GB and 128GB models will be available for purchase as well for $199 and $299 respectively.

The offer applies until December 31, but the numbers each store will have in stock are rather limited - 40-50 per club.

The first generation Apple iPad Air will be also on-sale in Sam's Club, as in many other retailers at $100 down the official price.

We guess other stores will be getting similar discounts for the latest Apple flagship. Do you plan of getting one for yourself this holiday season?

HTC Desire 620 in the works, Taiwan's NCC reveals

The NCC is Taiwan's equivalent of the USA's FCC, and its documents have revealed a new smartphone that is currently in the works: the HTC Desire 620.

Not one, but two versions of this yet unheard of upcoming handset have been certified by the NCC. The Desire 620h will top out at 3G (HSPA) networks, while the Desire 620u will support 4G LTE.

Both models will have dual-SIM functionality built-in, and that unfortunately is everything we know about the Desire 620 right now.

Given its name, however, we can speculate that it shall act as a successor to the Desire 610 (pictured above), which was unveiled in early 2014. It could also serve the same role for the Desire 616, but that has only arrived on the market in June, and it would be a bit early for a refresh.

It's unclear if we'll see the new Desire 620 across the world, or if its release will be limited to a few Asian markets, like many other Desire-branded devices before it. Hopefully we'll find out more about it soon.

Samsung Ativ S gets updated to Windows Phone 8.1

The Samsung Ativ S is now ready to enter the Windows Phone 8.1 club. Lagging behind several Nokia handsets, the smartphone launched two years ago is finally starting to receive an over-the-air update to Windows Phone 8.1.

Owners of the Ativ S in both Italy and Germany have reported getting asked to perform the update. Furthermore, Samsung confirmed the rollout for unbranded units sold in Italy, so other European countries should see it pretty soon, we assume.

As is usually the case with such things, the rollout might take a while, so perhaps don't lose sight of your patience just yet.

The update comes with a few new features, such as the Action Center for notifications and shortcuts, the ability to use a background image for the tiled home screen, a swipe-enabled keyboard, an optional third row of tiles, improved Bing search, separate volume levels for ringtones and notifications and for media files and apps, a new layout for the Camera app, live folders, and a screen sharing option (that works only via USB).

Music and Videos are now two separate apps. The dialer, calendar, task manager, and Internet Explorer have been updated too, sporting better performance and graphic

BlackBerry Passport gets the gold-plating treatment

Early last month we came across photos of a gold-plated BlackBerry Passport, but details were scarce. This might be the source of these photos - Vietnamese company Mavang is doing custom gold plating of Passports.

The square-screened business smartphone features a forged stainless steel plate for durability, but is also visible on the outside as a metal rim.

     
BlackBerry Passport with 24K gold plating

It's exactly that rim that is gold-plated with 24K gold in a process that takes between three and four hours, including time for disassembly.

The price varies between VND 8,000,000 and 10,000,00 ($375-$470) depending on customizations required by the customer - carving a message or a business logo.