Sony slashes handheld game consoles target as Vita struggles

The company's earnings report shows it remains on track for a small profit for the year as it shrunk third-quarter losses

By Jay Alabaster | 07 February 13

Sony's Vita and PlayStation Portable handheld game consoles continued to struggle in the crucial holiday shopping season, but the company shrunk its overall losses from a year ago and is still on track to return to profitability this fiscal year.

Sony revealed the numbers as part of its earnings announcement for the October-December quarter. The company booked an overall loss for the period of ¥1.1 billion (US$120 million), far better than its massive ¥15.8 billion loss a year ago.The Tokyo-based electronics manufacturer on Thursday cut its global sales target for its portable games consoles by 30 percent, saying it now targets 7 million units versus the 10 million it predicted in November. The Vita launched from February last year in much of the world, making 2012 its first full holiday season.

The company held to its goal for a ¥20 billion profit this fiscal year through March, after a record annual loss last year. It will be helped in that regard through special one-time profits, including those from the sale of its U.S. headquarters in New York City.

Sony's core electronics business booked an operating loss in the quarter, as both its mobile products and home entertainment segments were in the red. Its PlayStation gaming division remained profitable by a slim margin, but it had another loss in its long-suffering television business.

The cut in Sony's portable game sales target comes after multiple hints from the company that the Vita may be underperforming expectations. In a round-table interview last month in Tokyo, CEO Kazuo Hirai said sales are "on the lower end of our expected range."

Sony appears to be gearing up for the launch of its next generation PlayStation 4, with a major gaming announcement planned in New York for Feb. 20. Local media have said the PS4 will go on sale this year, launching in time for the 2013 holiday season.

The company's struggles with the Vita coincide with those of Nintendo, which also cut targets for its handheld 3DS and new Wii U home console after a tough holiday period. Both companies are trying to maintain interest in their pricey hardware even as the gaming market for low-priced titles aimed at smartphones and tablets continues to grow.

Overall, Sony's profits for the quarter were buoyed by strong showings in its movie and music business, which saw boosted income from titles like "007 Skyfall" and "Hotel Transylvania." Its financial division also had a strong quarter.

Sony does not break down separate sales figures for the Vita and PlayStation Portable in its earnings release. The company's financial year runs from April through March.

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Group test: what's the best budget laptop?

The Top 5 Laptops for less than £600

If you need an affordable, portable laptop, a netbook isn’t always your best option.

• Laptops reviews
• Laptops buying advice
• Netbooks reviews

5. Acer Aspire V5-571

• Reviewed on: 6 September 12
• RRP: £499 inc VAT
• Rating: 

The Acer Aspire V5-571 is very much a budget choice. Its quite-usable battery life, competent screen and generous dimensions make it a workable choice for a portable machine, but you may pine for more power with challenging computing tasks.

4. Lenovo IdeaPad S205-1038

• Reviewed on: 13 September 11
• RRP: £340 inc. VAT
• Rating: 

If you’re after something that’s easy to carry around but has enough power to deal with tasks beyond the everyday then the Lenovo IdeaPad S205-1038 is well worth considering.

3. Samsung RV511

• Reviewed on: 31 May 11
• RRP: £534.05 inc VAT
• Rating: 

The Samsung RV511 is a well specified laptop that provides plenty of the features and certainly most of the performance you can expect of any laptop under £1000. Build quality is also fairly solid, if a bit chunky and plasticky feeling. It’s a well-rounded package and certainly worth short-listing if you’re shopping for a no-frills laptop under £500.

2. Toshiba Satellite Pro L850-11U

• Reviewed on: 20 September 12
• RRP: £500 inc VAT
• Rating: 

The Toshiba Satellite Pro L850 lacks the pace of some budget notebooks, and the screen and input device are trimmed to the budget price. Triumphs for the Satellite Pro include its large hard drive and usable speakers, while battery life proved quite usable too. For a business on a budget, it will handle the basics.

1. Acer Aspire V3-571

• Reviewed on: 7 September 12
• RRP: £450 inc VAT
• Rating: 

The Acer Aspire V3-571 laptop is a great example of just how much can be achieved within the constraints of a severely limited budget.

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Samsung Galaxy S3 mini review and price details

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini review

Price: From £26.00 p.c.m

L ooking for a decent Android smartphone, but don't want one as big and expensive as the Samsung Galaxy S3 or HTC One X+? Then read our Galaxy S3 mini review to find out if this is the phone for you.

Samsung's Galaxy S3 mini looks like a smaller version of its flagship Galaxy S3 smartphone, and it is, but there's more to this phone than just its shrunken size. See also: Group test: what's the best Android phone?

Samsung Galaxy S3: Design and build

The Galaxy S3 mini looks almost identical to its bigger brother, the Galaxy S3, apart from a few minor, almost unnoticeable, cosmetic changes and of course the fact it's smaller. All the buttons are in the same place but the front facing camera and sensors have switched sides, as has the headphone port, and on the back the LED flash and speaker have moved slightly.

Apart from these insignificant changes, the Galaxy S3 mini has the same appearance with nice curved sides and rounded corners. It’s more pebble-like because it's smaller and also fatter than the Galaxy S3. It's 10.2mm thick compared to 8.6mm. Nevertheless, it's still lighter than the already light full-size S3 at 113g.

Being small and rounded makes the Galaxy S3 mini fit nicely into the hand. The only time you have to stretch when using it one handed is to pull the notification bar down from the top of the screen.

At the time of writing the Galaxy S3 mini is available in pebble blue and marble white but other colours including garnet red and titanium grey are in their way.

Like its flagship counterpart, the Galaxy S3 mini feels well made. The front is one piece of glass with a silver metal surround giving it rigidity and strength. However, we're not fans of the flimsy plastic rear cover which hides the battery, SIM card slot and microSD card slot.

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini: Hardware and performance

Samsung has fitted the Galaxy S3 mini with a 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. It's nothing to get excited about and neither are the benchmark results.

In GeekBench 2 the Galaxy S3 mini managed an average score of 763. The similarly priced Nexus 4 scored a whopping 2,009. The Galaxy S3 hit 1669 points. Performance from a user point of view is generally good but there are signs of lag every now and then.

The Galaxy S3 mini didn't do amazingly well in the SunSpider JavaScript test completing the test in an average of 2,037ms. Our recorder holder is the iPhone 5 with 903ms but the score isn't far off the Nexus 4's 1,906ms time.

We also test graphics performance with GLBenchmark 2.5 in which the Galaxy S3 mini posted a frame rate of 12fps. Not great when compared to the 39fps recorded by the iPhone 5 and Nexus 4 but we found the phone could play games like Temple Run 2 smoothly enough.

As we've mentioned already, the Galaxy S3 mini has a smaller screen than the S3, and most smartphones for that matter. It matches the iPhone 5 at 4in and is a much more manageable size than many smartphones on offer in today's market.

Although it might be manageable, we're not bowled over by the screen quality. It's bright and vibrant like the Galaxy S3 thanks to its Super AMOLED technology but it has a relatively low resolution of 480x800 and a pixel density of 233ppi. This is the same as much cheaper phones like the Huawei Ascend G330 and way short of the Nexus 4's 768x1280 and 318ppi. Things look generally a bit rough round the edges.

On the storage front, the Galaxy S3 mini is fairly limited with only 8GB and 16GB models. It's not as limited as the Nexus 4 though since it has a microSD card slot for up to 32GB cards. The expansion slot is annoyingly located underneath the battery.

Connectivity includes the usual dual-band Wi-Fi, assisted GPS and Bluetooth 4.0. When the Galaxy S3 mini launched it didn't have NFC (near-field communications). Our review sample didn't either but Samsung has re-launched it with this feature so you should get it if you buy one. If you're looking to start using 4G mobile broadband on EE or other networks later in the year then you'll have to look elsewhere as the Galaxy S3 mini is restricted to 3G.

One thing that annoyed us was the pickiness of the Galaxy S3 mini when plugging it into a PC. The handset would only show up as an external storage device to transfer files when we used the supplied Samsung USB cable.

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini: Cameras

Another area of compromise on specifications to achieve the price of the Galaxy S3 mini is the cameras. It has a distinctly mid-range 5Mp rear facing camera and a low quality VGA front facing camera.

The rear facing camera produced the kind of pictures you'd expect from a mid-range 5Mp smartphone. It's a pretty good camera and the software Samsung provides is decent too. Video footage is not too shabby at a maximum of 720p. See below for one of the photos we took with the Galaxy S3 mini.

Unfortunately the front facing camera doesn't exude the same quality. At VGA resolution it's predictably grainy.

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini: Software

An advantage of the Galaxy S3 mini is that is comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box. For a while it was more up-to-date than the Galaxy S3 but this is not the case anymore.

As we've come to expect from Samsung smartphones, there is the TouchWiz user interface instead of stock Android, which in its latest form is very good. Which you prefer will be down to personal taste as each has their own pros, cons and exclusive features.

The Galaxy S3 mini has almost all the features which made the Galaxy S3 good such as various motion controls like Direct Call and Smart Alert, customised notification bar, Smart Stay and a power saving mode.

One of the main features of Jelly Bean is Google Now, a predictive search hub which Samsung has left into the OS. There's also the inclusion of expandable notifications but there's no option for widgets on the home screen. We can't say what features will be added with a software update in the future.

There's a reasonable small amount of pre-loaded apps and there are a decent selection of widgets on offer.  

Samsung Galaxy S3 mini: Battery life

We were a bit confused to find a 5.6Wh (1500mAh) battery inside the Galaxy S3 mini – the Galaxy S2 had a 6.1Wh (1650mAh) battery. However, we got a far better battery life than we were expecting.

The Galaxy S3 mini lasted through a day of use comfortably. As you can see from the screenshot, after 24 hours of use we still had nearly 40 percent of the battery remaining. This gives it the potential to be a two day phone, provided you don't use it intensively for gaming or video playback.

 We like the inclusion of a power saving mode which can be easily switched on and off from the notifications menu. It doesn't have quite the same control as the Galaxy S3 though with only CPU and screen power saving options. We only used the power saving mode for a portion of our test making the battery life look even better.

Another good point is that the battery charges up very quickly. However, it's disappointing to find that the Galaxy S3 mini wouldn't charge properly from a PC using a generic USB cable. In fact, the battery life dropped even though it was plugged in. The device only worked properly when using the supplied cable

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HTC One SV review

£319.95 inc VAT

HTC has been criticised for releasing too many phones in the last few years but it seems the Taiwanese giant just can't help itself. Announced and released late in 2012, the One SV is yet another Android phone. It's a mid-range device that features 4G capability and an excellent design but ultimately offers little that we haven't seen before. It's also overpriced. Read ourHTC One X+ review.

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Smartphones seem to be heading towards a "bigger is better" trend, but the HTC One SV has steered away from this. It has 4.3in screen so it's smaller in size than most current flagship devices, which tend to range from 4.7in to 5in. The end result is a positive one as the One SV is one of the most comfortable phones we've used. See also: Group test: what's the best smartphone?

The smaller footprint means the One SV is easy to hold and use single-handedly and the screen is almost the perfect width. It's not a stretch for your thumb to touch all corners of the screen, which can be an issue on larger devices. Further, we love its design. The black, rubberised material on the back provides a comfortable, non-slip grip while the gloss black bezel on the front is attractive.

There are a number of small touches that add to the overall look and feel of the One SV. The back tapers inwards towards the edges making the phone feel slimmer than it actually is. We also like the angled top and bottom edges. The former makes it particularly easy to press the near perfectly positioned power/lock button. Touch-sensitive back, home and multitasking shortcut keys sit below the display, while a volume rocker is located on the right side. All are well positioned.

The back of the One SV is removable and this provides two advantages over HTC's more expensive One X — the battery is removable and therefore replaceable and there's a microSD card for extra storage. There's 8GB of internal memory available on the phone itself.

The HTC One SV is a mid-range device so there's always going to be compromises. This comes in the form of the screen, which has a resolution of 800x480 and is significantly lower than many flagship devices on the market. The SLCD 2 display is bright and clear and offers exceptional viewing angles, but the low resolution means it can't display the same crisp text as other smartphones.

An Ice Cream Sandwich, with Sense

The HTC One SV runs Google's 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich software and once again features HTC's Sense UI overlay. The user experience is very similar to most of HTC's more expensive range, with a few exclusions. HTC hasn't officially stated if or when the One SV will be upgraded to the latest 4.2 Jelly Bean version of Android.

We love some of Sense's less advertised touches, such as asking whether you'd like to save an incoming phone number as a new contact, the convenient four dock icon shortcuts on the lock screen and a slick suite of widgets, including HTC's now iconic clock and weather widget.

While Sense is user friendly, however, we still feel HTC has made plenty of changes for changes sake. The phone app offers excellent linking of contacts from multiple sources but the interface feels cluttered and doesn't achieve any consistency with the regular Android UI. The default Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard has been replaced by HTC's keyboard and is neither better looking or designed. The multitasking menu is neither better implemented or more effective than Android's stock version.

Also a source of annoyance is the amount of Optus bloatware pre-installed on the phone. There's no less than 12 Optus apps that come with the One SV and almost all of them are useless. App Store, Games, Go Places, Music Shop, My Optus, Optus Ideas, Optus Now, Optus Zoo, Pics & Vids, Smart Safe, SocialView, TV & Video can all be disabled from the settings menu, but can't be uninstalled.

Thankfully, the HTC One SV isn't a slow or sluggish smartphone. It has a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and comes with 1GB of RAM. We didn't experience very much lag or slowdown, though some graphically intense games like GTA III and Dead Trigger did take a little longer to load than we expected. Overall, the performance of the One SV won't pose an issue for most users.

Mediocre camera, decent battery life

The HTC One SV has a 5-megapixel camera that can be best described as below average. The camera interface itself is one of the best we've used on a smartphone but the images captured suffer from a lack of quality, excess image noise and questionable colour reproduction. We also found the built-in autofocus to be erratic, especially when taking macro photos. A 1.6-megapixel camera on the front does a reasonable job for video calling apps like Skype and Tango but predictably captures poor quality photos.

The video recorder on the One SV doesn't fare much better either. The quality is passable and the phone records in full HD 1080p, but quality is grainy and it's almost impossible to capture a video without shake or judder.

Despite being a 4G phone, the HTC One SV has reasonable battery life. It lasted almost a full day during testing before needing a recharge. This is a particularly good result since most 4G phones suffer from poor battery life. The smaller screen and mid-range specifications obviously help in this regard.

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Nokia to launch 41Mp PureView Lumia smartphone

Nokia is planning to bring its 41Mp PureView camera to its Lumia range of Windows Phone 8 smartphones.

The excellent 41Mp camera found on the Symbian-powered Nokia 808 PureView might be making its way onto a Lumia smartphone. The new model will be called the EOS and will launch this summer in the US, according to the Guardian.

Nokia's current flagship smartphone, the Lumia 920, has PureView technology but an 8.7Mp camera. The 41Mp 808 PureView was unveiled at Mobile World Congress (MWC) last year. Favourable reviews, of the camera at least, followed.

See also: Group test: what's the best Windows phone?

Instead of taking astonishingly large pictures, the 41Mp sensor is designed to oversample and combine up to seven pixels into one to eliminate noise, especially in low light situations. By default the camera shoots at 5Mp but can be set at 38Mp at its highest.

We found the 41Mp camera on the Nokia 808 PureView extremely impressive but it was a shame it had to be attached to a poor quality Symbian handset. So bringing the technology to a Lumia Windows Phone 8 device would be a step in the right direction and a means by which Nokia can distinguish itself from the competition.

MWC is coming up at the end of the month and Nokia will be there so it's likely, if this 41Mp Lumia EOS does exist, that it will be announced there. We'll be there to bring you all the news and hands-on with the devices.

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