Tonight Sony Ericsson announced their new integration of Facebook inside Xperia. This will be available both as a feature of the new Xperia mini products but also in a coming software update to the Xperia arc and Xperia PLAY that in most markets will start to roll-out already now during Q2.
First of all – Facebook really has turned into something huge. There are reports out there stating that when looking at smartphone app usage as much as 50% of consumers app time is used in the facebook app. Truly amazing numbers.
What they’ve done is to create a solution where access to Facebook isn’t only tightly tied to that specific app. Instead you will be able to interact with Facebook in a lot of ways from different parts of your phone. This means it will be easy, faster and more intuitive to like, comment and share from your Xperia smartphone.
Some of the main features are:
- Single sign on to Facebook
When you start your phone for the very first time you have the option of logging into Facebook and thereby create this connection. That way you won’t have to log into Facebook or different apps like the Facebook app, Timescape or any of added integration points coming with this feature. This also enables all of the above to happen automatically unless you choose to turn specific parts off of course.
- Contact sync with Facebook
Just as with the current Facebook app you have the option of syncing your Facebook contacts into your phone book but They’ve added more Facebook info that you can access. So now if you want to see your friends’ status, photos or likes you only have to look them up in your phone book.
- Calendar sync with Facebook
Now also your calendar can be synched with Facebook so that you see your Facebook events and birthdays of all your Facebook friends directly in your calendar.
- Facebook photos in your phone Gallery
The Gallery application in your phone automatically shows your local pictures and e.g. your Picasa pictures. Now They’ve included in the gallery your Facebook photos and the Facebook photos your tagged in. So now you can find all these photos one click away and comment and like straightaway.
- Music player Like-button
When listening to a track in the included music player you now will have the possibility of clicking “like” on a song directly while listening. Whenever you do that a post will be posted on your Facebook wall. From that post your friends can click through and learn more about the specific song you liked, in some cases listen to it directly and also even buy it. It all works through the framework They’ve built over years on our Track-ID service.
- Media discovery widget
A widget is included that automatically shows you the videos and music that your friends have recommended on their Facebook wall. Everything your friends link to on services such as YouTube, Spotify etc will be shown there and you can easily view your friends favorite media by just a single click – great to keep entertained.
Important differences compared to other initiatives are that this really integrates into your phone in many different places and does not focus only on easy sharing or posting on Facebook but also on reading and interacting with your friends content. Another important benefit of this is that it will be included in the entire 2011 Xperia range and isn’t limited to a specific model. Our aim with the Xperia family is to offer a broad range of choice but all of them will give you a great entertaining experience and with the wide appeal of Facebook I really think this suits almost all target groups and form factors.
