If you've ever been annoyed at having to turn your smartphone off during a flight, rejoice! The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has just announced that it will now allow airlines to permit the use of mobile phones though out the flight.
Before this announcement you would have to either turn off your device or put it into Airplane Mode. Recent relaxations in the policy meant you would only have to do this during take off and landing.
Now, however, you won't have to turn off or use the Airplane Mode at all, so you'll be able to make and receive calls, or browse the internet, through all stages of your journey.
Cloud service
The relaxing of the rules doesn't just affect smartphones either, with tablets, laptops, ereaders and other personal electronic devices being allowed to remain on throughout the flight.
However, this doesn't mean that all flights will allow you uninterrupted use of your phone. EASA is leaving it up to each airline to decide the level of use of personal electronic devices.
Each airline will also need to go through an assessment process to make sure that aircraft systems are not affected in any way by the use of electronic equipment.
These measures will only affect European flights, with rules regarding the use of personal electronic devices in the US and Australia remaining the same, so you won't see the Airplane Mode setting disappear from your phone any time soon.
GT Advanced's move comes about a month after Apple announced iPhones without sapphire crystal displays.
GT Advanced Technologies, which made headlines last year for inking a sapphire deal with Apple, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
GT, which has about $85 million of cash wants debtor-in-possession financing, which would allow it to stay afloat (and pay its employees).
"GT has a strong and fundamentally sound underlying business," Tom Gutierrez, president and chief executive officer of GT, said in a statement. "Today's filing does not mean we are going out of business; rather, it provides us with the opportunity to continue to execute our business plan on a stronger footing, maintain operations of our diversified business, and improve our balance sheet."
Last year, Apple announced plans for a new facility in Arizona, with GT Advanced Technologies as a partner. Apple provided GT with a $578 million pre-payment, which GT must pay back over five years, starting in 2015.
Under the deal, GT is required to "provide sapphire material" to Apple. "GT will own and operate ASF [advanced sapphire furnaces] furnaces and related equipment to produce the material at an Apple facility in Arizona where GT expects to employ over 700 people," the company said last year.
Though there were rumors that Apple would use a sapphire display on its new iPhones, Cupertino stuck with Corning Gorilla Glass, likely because it can be expensive and labor-intensive to product sapphire displays. Apple does use sapphire for the surface of its Touch ID button, while its upcoming Apple Watchwill be protected by sapphire crystal.
Still, GT's stock price took a nosedive in the wake of Apple's Sept. 9 iPhone event, when it was revealed that iPhone 6 and 6 Plus do not sport sapphire displays. GT said today that the bankruptcy means that NASDAQ may temporarily halt trading.
In July, eBay announced a partnership with noted auction house Sotheby’s to help bring its inventory of art, antiques and collectibles online via a new live auction format with real-time bidding. At the time, eBay said Sotheby’s was the “anchor tenant” to trial this new format on eBay.com. Today, the company is expanding on these earlier efforts with a number of other well-known auction houses, including Doyle New York, Freeman’s, Garth’s Auctions and Swann Auction Galleries, which will all now feature art auctions via a new section on eBay’s website.
Ebay explains that its live auctions are launching in partnership with Invaluable, a technology provider for live auctions focused on art and collectibles. Invaluable’s software, including its online bidding technology are being used on eBay, while eBay – somewhat ironically, given it popularized the online auction in consumer culture – is delivering access to its large user base of 149 million active buyers.
With the new auctions, buyers will be able to browse catalogs for upcoming sales, then bid for themselves at the online events or enter in absentee bids for those they can’t attend.
The auctions will be hosted on a new site at eBay (ebay.com/collectibles-liveauctions), and will also be available via eBay’s search engine for discovery purposes.
The biggest problem with iPhones — much like bones and marriages — is that they break. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are no exception, and while they each do decently in a drop test over concrete, they can also suffer some pretty significant damage.
Scuffs on the case are annoying, and cracked screens are obviously worse. The phones are damaged in different ways depending on how they’re dropped, whether on their sides, fronts or backs.
Watch this here to see how the iPhone 6 fares in a drop test.
SEE THE WORLD AWAIT AND CELEBRATE APPLE’S IPHONE 6
Cortana is Microsoft's equivalent of a virtual assistant
The news that the latest Nokia Lumia 735 includes Microsoft's Cortana, and the images of the desktop version for Windows 10, are just the latest exciting developments in computing. The next step is one where machines become capable of learning and self-reflexively developing knowledge about the people and objects around them.
The next step in emerging technologies is a service that consolidates our experience. Currently apps like Siri andCortana are limited by their operating system. They don't engage with other apps so they tend to be more of an annoyance than an assistant. But the new generation of Virtual Assistants will be the new gateway to the internet and all the people and things connected to it.
If we are to map what the future Virtual Assistant service will be –what it will look like, what it will do – then we need to understand the opportunities and challenges of bringing the VA of the future to life for users, regulators, and service suppliers.
On a magnitude scale, if social media and big data are minor tremors, VAs are earthquakes of impending disruption to individuals, families, and communities.
VAs will not be divorced from the actual real-life experiences, actions, and choices of the people that use them. If you are walking home on a street with a high level of assaults or robberies, your VA will proactively alert you and propose an alternative route.
If you are an alcoholic on the wagon, your VA will alert your sponsor when you drink a beer or enter a bar. Initially, we will synch our mental and physical wellbeing with our VAs. But just as wired web connections or smartphone cables are disappearing, the progression of VA connectivity to wearables or hearables – and then implants – is inevitable.
In families, the VA will automatically alert parents when their child connects with a suspect profile showing a 97 per cent correlation with likely grooming or bullying behaviours on a social network. This is no different to how financial institutions trust their fraud algorithms to be faster, more reliable and comprehensive than any human in assessing real-time risk in credit card transactions. You may not want to offload your parenting responsibilities to your VA, but you may be grossly irresponsible if you don't.
VAs will integrate themselves into every facet of life, but they won't just be personal devices, there will also be business uses. It may be annoying when the bank cancels your credit card when you are entertaining clients on a business trip but would any business be willing to cut their credit cards off from automated fraud detection services?
For brands, particularly those engaging directly with consumers, they need to be thinking now about how they are going to fit into this next communication revolution. Those who are early to the game will have a great advantage in this new world, whereas those who aren't looking to see how they can work with Virtual Assistants are in danger of falling behind.
Virtual Assistants have the potential to hugely disrupt advertising as people rely on their Virtual Assistants to make rational decisions for them – decisions which will likely see them plump for the generic rather than the branded version of a product.
The disruption is not limited to the world of marketing, retail, management consultancy and life coaches are all likely to face challenges from the growth of VA's.
Virtual Assistants of this kind are not likely to be available in the next four to five years and Gartner estimates that they will be mainstream in a decade.
Dr Chris Brauer is director of innovation in the Institute of Management Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Project Virtual Assistant is a research collaboration between Goldsmiths and media agency Mindshare UK's FUTURE_MEDIALAB, and the report can be downloaded here.
As of right now, copying CDs for personal use is no longer a crime in the UK. Changes to the UK's copyright laws mean that you can no longer be prosecuted for filling up your MP3 player with music you happened to buy in a different format, and taking backup copies of your favourite movies is not going to land you in hot water either.
Some of you may be aware that this was meant to have happened back in June but then, thanks in part to some aggressive lobbying by the entertainment industry, the Government appeared to get cold feet.
While happy to pass changes to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act that allowed data mining, copying for academic research and in order to make media more accessible (for example, creating audiobooks with text-to-speech software) the law continued to take a dim view of personal copying and those amendments were shelved, pending further review.
That 'further review' has now happened and the Government's Intellectual Property Office has been able to announce that it is to allow personal copying for the first time - but possibly several years too late.
This doesn't mean the end of copyright or a free-for-all for pirates, and consumers may not get quite the freedom to copy film and video that they may expect. So what will change under the new law and doesn't this just formalise something that was happening anyway?
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 set out the limits of copyright protection for intellectual property. If you are a copyright holder such as a filmmaker, musician or writer, a publisher or just a company that owns the rights to a published work then the Act can help make sure that you get paid and - just as important in many cases - that someone else can't come along and exploit your work.
'Fair dealing' exceptions are made for using snippets of work in reviews or an academic context as well as some provision for incidental use (such as a copyrighted photograph in the background of a film or music accidentally recorded in a news broadcast). What was definitely not allowed until this month was making an entire copy of a work for personal use or sharing copies, even on a non-commercial basis.
These protections have served copyright holders well but as legislation has not kept pace with changes in technology, change was almost inevitable. Buying albums again and again in different formats just to be able to keep playing them, and being barred from 'format shifting' media between different digital forms, seem to many like unnecessary restrictions.
"The groups lobbying on behalf of rights holders are very powerful with international political influence," says Jim Killock or digital rights campaigners the Open Rights Group, "but they have pushed an extreme and unsustainable view opposing parody and data mining and insisted upon an 'iPod tax' in return for format shifting. The government has agreed to modest but important changes despite heavy lobbying but you have to wonder whether copyright lobbyists' credibility may have been dented by their extreme position."
What's changed?
The changes to the Copyright Design and Patents Act implemented in June and those agreed this month take the form of five 'statutory instruments'.
Four of these add provisions for making copies of existing works. These apply to public administration (to allow for easier discussion of a work by a public body), for use in research, making an accessible version for use by someone with a disability and simply for personal use. All of these include the concept of 'format shifting' for the first time so that you can take a film or a piece of music that you can only play on one device and make it usable on another - turning a CD into an MP3, for example.
A fifth amendment makes it legal to use copyrighted material for caricature, parody or pastiche as well as clarifying the use of quotations.
UPDATED Everything we know about the future of windows
Windows 10 will focus on better multitasking and an improved desktop experience
With Windows 8 and now Windows 8.1, Microsoft tried – not entirely successfully – to make tablets part of a continuum that goes from number-crunching workstations and high-end gaming rigs through all-in-one touchscreen media systems and thin-and light notebooks down to slender touch tablets.
The general consensus is that it still has a long way to go to produce a unified OS. Recently, Microsoft publicly made the first steps to doing just that, with Windows 10. Skipping the Windows 9 name entirely, the Redmond, Wash. firm aims to step into the next generation of computing with the right foot forward.
You will soon be able to download Microsoft's Windows 10 Technical Preview by venturing over to its Windows Insider Programwebsite. You'll need a Microsoft account to get it, and it's worth bearing in mind that it's not the finished article so may be a bit rough around the edges.
Is the new OS any good? Read our hands on Windows 10 review to find out
While there is little information regarding the Windows 10 Road Map currently available following the event and the Technical Preview, this is what we know so far regarding the stymied release of Windows 10:
The event on September 30 announced the release of the Technical Preview of Windows 10 for laptops and desktops, often referred to as WTP, DP (Developer Preview) or CTP (community technology previews). This is just over three years after Microsoft unveiled the first public beta build of Windows 8, known as Windows Developer Preview).
Microsoft confirmed the rumors and announced its Windows Insider Program, starting October 1st, designed to keep early adopters up to date with the latest preview builds of Windows 10.
Starting with Technical Preview for laptops and desktops, the preview build will extend to servers short after.
Consumer preview builds will not be available until early next year, according to Microsoft's Terry Myerson.
The Technical Preview will end sharply on April 15 of next year, which conveniently leaves right off at...
Microsoft's Build 2015 conference next April, at which the company will talk more about Universal Apps and likely issue a Windows 10 release date.
Finally, the company promises that Windows 10 will ship to consumers and enterprise "later in the year" in 2015, Myerson said.
Cut to the chase What is it? A complete update of Windows When is it out? It will launch "later in the year" in 2015 What will it cost? We really have no idea. Microsoft will not comment on pricing yet.
Unfortunately, we know nothing about exactly when the final version of Windows 10 will release, save for "later in the year" in 2015. Luckily, Microsoft teased plenty of details on what the next version of Windows will be like when it lands next year. Here are the highlights.
One operating system designed with every device in mind
It's still all about unity
Windows 10 will be "one application platform" for all the devices that run Windows, according to Microsoft Windows head Terry Myerson, with one store to rule them all. (So to speak.)
While on stage at the event, Microsoft showed images of the new operating system running on everything from desktop PCs to smartphones. In fact, Myerson confirmed that Windows 10 will be the driving OS behind its smartphone platform as well.
Myerson was mum on the naming conventions (e.g. whether Windows 10 on phones would be known as Windows Phone 10, et. al). But what matters is this: Windows 10 will be behind every device that Microsoft has a hand in, save most likely for the Xbox One.
You'll still be able to get things done with Windows 10
Microsoft still cares about enterprise
In fact, the crux of the September 30th event was to speak to enterprise users and get it in front of them first. "Windows 10 is a very novel approach of separating corporate and personal data across all devices," Myerson said on stage. "Windows 10 is going to be our greatest enterprise platform, ever."
Microsoft didn't exactly please its enterprise audience with Windows 8.1 – adoption has been awfully slow. (And now will likely halt with this new version on the horizon.)
To that end, Microsoft's Windows Phone guru Joe Belfiore even noted that the company is "looking to find the balance, so that all the Windows 7 users get a familiar experience on the devices they already have."
The new, true Start menu returns!
The Start menu: bigger, better, stronger
The return of the Start menu that Microsoft teased during its Build 2014 conference earlier this year was shown off in full force at its Sept. 30th event. Replete with a merging of the traditional Windows 7-style interface and Windows 8 Live Tiles, the new Start menu is designed to please both camps: touch and mouse users.
"They don't have to learn any new way to drive," Belfiore said, referring to Windows 7 business users. That said, customization will also be featured throughout, first with the ability to resizing the Start menu itself along with the Live Tiles within.
The Start menu features empowered search capabilities as well, able to crawl your entire machine, not to mention web results. (Through Bing and not Google, we'd imagine.)
Snap windows (and desktops) in all sorts of new ways
Snap to it, will ya?
The traditional Windows 7 Snap View works in Windows 10's desktop mode with classic and universal apps, enhanced by a new "Snap Assist" interface. Snap Assist works in tandem with Task View, a new feature that allows users to create multiple desktop environments within a single instance of Windows 10.
You can now grab apps from different desktops and group them together using the Snap Assist UI, all of which is mouse or touch controlled. These features seem more designed for face-level multi-taskers, or people that rely more on visual computing. Of course, this comes in addition to enhanced keyboard shortcuts for power users.
Keeping in touch
Microsoft is keen on maintaining the ground it achieved in touch-based computing through Windows 8 while reintroducing the intuitive desktop interface of Windows 7. To that end, many of the new multitasking features will be optimized for touch devices as well, like Task View. But it doesn't stop there.
The Redmond firm teased a hybrid interface mode for 2-in-1 laptops and other hybrid devices. Containing elements of both the current Windows 8.1 Start screen and the desktop improvements, this new touch-focused start screen will switch based on the input used.
Think of a home screen that allows for both touch input, with large icons and response to gestures or swipes, and more traditional mouse or touchpad interaction, with smaller buttons and list-like interfaces. Belfiore called the approach "continuum" on stage, and the philosophy makes sense at least on paper.
Click on through for a detailed look at the rumors and leaks leading up to the recent Windows 10 announcement. On the third page, we projected what Windows 9 – err – Windows 10 would be like, or at least what we had hoped. Read on to see how much we got right.
Facebook has already conquered social media, and its other ongoing conquests range from virtual reality tomessaging.
But the social network may be about to embark on a new frontier: healthcare.
Facebook's health initiative will be twofold, three separate sources told Reuters.
One part could take shape as online "support communities" where people could congregate and discuss their ailments, while Facebook is also reportedly considering building a "preventative care" lifestyle improvement app.
Private practice
Facebook will begin rolling these apps out quietly and under different names because of the stigma surrounding Facebook's various privacy policies, a source told the site.
That's pretty ironic considering the company's tumultuous relationship with its own users' anonymity.
This all may have begun when Facebook changed its profiles in 2012 to include users' organ donor status, a move that reportedly resulted in more people than usual registering to become organ donors.
Facebook also apparently noticed a trend in people with certain conditions and illnesses regularly searching the social network for information.
Some users will no doubt be uncomfortable sharing such personal information online, so it's a good thing Facebook is also changing its real name policy.
IN DEPTH How different is Windows 10's Start menu from that in Windows 7?
The new Start menu is here!
It might not be the key feature in Windows 10, but one of the most striking design changes in Windows 10 harks back to an old one – the Start menu.
The menu has been given a Windows Live Tile-style makeover, and you can now pin whatever you want to the panel on the right.
So, just like on Windows Phone, you could pin a preferred contact or favoured app. Remember that Live Tiles are dynamic, so they can show you the latest news or whether for your current location.
You could also pin a folder you regularly use; it's up to you. The left of the Start menu works like the old Windows 7 one used to – so you can search for whatever you want and it can be activated using the Start key on your keyboard, and you can see recently accessed programs and browse through other programs, too, via an All Apps menu.
The All Apps option now features a vertical scrollbar, so you don't get any of the multi-me menu stacking that you used to get in Windows. As with Windows 7 and 8, the best way to find anything is by searching for it rather than browsing for it.
By bringing the Start menu back Microsoft is acknowledging that the Start screen went too far for some users, especially in the corporate space. But those Modern UI apps (now referred to as Universal apps we think) still provide the link with touchscreens.
But in reality bringing back the Start menu doesn't change the functionality of Windows – the Start screen was the Start menu of Windows 8 andWindows 8.1 and, while it was full screen, contained all of the same functionality (you could hit the Windows key and immediately start typing to search, for example).
The top of the Start menu now has your user account icon at the top, so you can lock your PC, change your account picture or sign out. Another power button enables you to sleep, shut down or restart your PC.
A panel underneath this contains access to your files via the File Explorer as well as shortcuts to your Documents and Pictures. We actually ended up pinning the File Explorer icon to our taskbar just as it is in Windows 8. An arrow beside the File Explorer icon in the Start menu shows you your most recently accessed folders for quick access.
As in Windows 8.1 you can right-click on the Start button itself to get a 'power menu' – quick access to the Control Panel and other more advanced features such as Run, Disk Management and the Task Manager.
One big change is that you can now resize the menu itself. This doesn't work that well at the moment as you can only make it flatter (more of a horizontal bar) or higher vertically. You can't freely resize it to form a smaller version of the now-old Start screen.
Right-clicking any item in the Start menu brings up other options, such as pinning to the taskbar, removing the app from the Start menu or, where appropriate, removing the app from your PC. As with the Windows 8 Start screen, you can drag the live tiles to rearrange them.
You can also turn individual live tiles off (perhaps you don't want to see your latest emails in the menu, for example) as well a change the size of the tile just as you can on Windows Phone and could in Windows 8 and 8.1. Small, Medium, Wide and Large are the various sizes available.
Right-clicking on blank space in the menu gives you two other options – Personalize and Properties. Personalization is currently about as useless as a chocolate teapot – it just takes you to a subset of the Control Panel that enables you to change the hue of the Start menu as well as your window borders. This setting will be overwritten if you change the theme, however.
Properties is a lot more interesting. It takes you to the Taskbar and Start menu Properties applet in Control Panel. Strangely, you're put into the Taskbar tab by default. Clicking on the Start menu tab shows you a few options, the top of which is a checked box labelled Use the Start menu instead of the Start screen. We do wonder how many people will choose to get the Start screen back. A handful, we're sure.
Some other options concern privacy for shared user accounts – you can clear the personal information from your live tiles as well as options to choose not to 'store and display' recently opened programs in the Start menu.
A Customize option provides more granular control over what is shown in the Start menu as well as behavioural characteristics such as whether sub-menus open automatically when you hover over them or whether dragging and dropping is allowed (both of these are permitted by default).
You can also choose to show System administrative tools in the menu and plenty of other things, too, such as the Control Panel itself, This PC (this is what My Computer used to be), your personal user folder or your music and video folders should you wish. It's all very customizable.
Whatever you think of the new Start menu, one thing is for sure – it makes Microsoft's insistence on not even having a Start button in Windows 8seem ridiculous. Just think about it; Microsoft missed out Windows' key modus operandi for a whole version.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact is the latest entrant in Sony's rapidly expanding line of Xperia Z handsets. Though the original Xperia Z was only launched in March 2013, there have since been three main entries into Sony's flagship line (the Xperia Z1, Xperia Z2 and the new Xperia Z3) along with tablets and the occasional compact variant.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact is the smaller version of Sony's latest flagship smartphone, the Xperia Z3. As has become customary with Sony's compact variants, the Xperia Z3 Compact shares quite a bit of technology with its bigger brother, but is it more than just a shrunk down version?
With a 4.6-inch screen (compared to the Xperia Z3's 5.2-inch) and an asking price of £429 (around US$703, AU$792) , the Xperia Z3 Compact is one of the more expensive mini variants of flagship smartphones that we've seen.
The Xperia Z3 Compact's size and weight makes it comfortable to hold
The LG G2 Mini, for example, comes in at around £180 ($295, AU$332), whilst the HTC One Mini 2's asking price is around the £300 ($492, AU$554) mark, both quite a bit under the Xperia Z3 Compact's price tag.
Positioning the Xperia Z3 Compact against other companies' flagship handsets, rather than the pared down mini variants, might seem like a risky move on Sony's part. However while smaller versions of flagship phones have often sacrificed a number of features of their larger brethren, the Xperia Z3 Compact does a very good job of keeping up with the full size Xperia Z3.
That doesn't mean that compromises haven't been made, however, and thankfully it seems that Sony has managed to keep these to a minimum.
Design
The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact takes design cues from the bigger Xperia Z3, along with the Xperia Z devices that have come before, namely in the OmniBalance design.
The idea behind Sony's OmniBalance design is that the Xperia Z3 Compact should be comfortable to hold no matter what you're using the smartphone for, be it taking videos, making calls, playing games and more.
Another tenet of the OmniBalance ethos is that the phone should look great from any angle. From my time with the Xperia Z3 Compact I can certainly vouch for the comfort aspect of the OmniBalance design of the handset.
The Omnibalance design is becoming a staple for Sony's Xperia phones
Throughout using it the Xperia Z3 Compact felt comfortable, no matter what task I was performing with it. Though it has a rather stark look to it, the rounded corners certainly help make it feel nice to hold.
This is helped by the dimensions of the Xperia Z3 Compact. Though there's nothing particularly compact about its 4.6-inch display, the thin bezels around the screen don't just make the body look good, but it keeps the dimensions down to 127 x 64.9 x 8.6mm.
The smaller size of the screen and body of the Xperia Z3 Compact is one of the areas that the Compact may have an advantage over its bigger sibling, depending on your preferences for the size of your smartphone.
While 5-inch and above smartphones are certainly growing in popularity, with Apple being particularly pleased with the reception its 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plushas received, not everyone will be comfortable with the Xperia Z3's 5.2-inch screen and 146 x 72 x 7.3mm dimensions.
By offering a very similar experience but with a smaller form factor, the Xperia Z3 Compact could find a receptive audience with those who haven't been swayed with the phablet craze.
I certainly didn't have any trouble reaching each corner of the screen with the thumb of the hand I was holding the Xperia Z3 Compact in. Helping with the comfort, the Xperia Z3 compact weighs just 129g with a thickness of 8.6mm.
While the comfort of the Xperia Z3 Compact is pretty evident, aesthetics are far more subjective. To my eye, however, the Xperia Z3 Compact again impresses. It manages to be minimal without looking plain, with Gorrila Glass covering the front and back, giving it an attractive and premium look.
The glass back gives a premium feel
Around the edge of the Xperia Z3 Compact is a translucent plastic surround. While it helps cushion impacts if you drop the Z3 Compact, it also gives the phone a premium frosted look that works very well.
As with previous entrants in the Xperia Z line, the Z3 compact is dust and waterproof, with IP65 and IP68 ratings, which among other things means it can be submerged in up to 1.5m of fresh water for 30 minutes.
This means that most ports are hidden under plastic covers. While it might prove to be a mild annoyance to have to remove the plastic cover every time you want to charge the Xperia Z3 compact, you'll probably be glad of it if you ever drop the phone in the bath. The covers also help give the body a much tidier look.
Covers for essential ports keep the Z3 Compact water and dust proof
One port that doesn't need to be covered to be waterproof is the headphone jack, which is convenient while not compromising the waterproof nature of the Xperia Z3 Compact. However, we're starting to see opened charging ports for water resistant phones, which would have been great here.
Button placement on the Xperia Z3 Compact is the same as on the full size Xperia Z3. While the power button's location in the middle of the right-hand side is a welcome relief for users of the larger Xperia Z3 who don't have to stretch to the top side of the phone's body, with the smaller Z3 Compact the placement doesn't feel quite so essential.
However, the power button, along with the volume controls and the camera button below it, are all comfortable to reach. Though they don't protrude much from the phone's body, they still feel responsive with a satisfying click when pressed.
The Xperia Z3 Compact comes in four different colours: white, black, orange and green. I had a chance to use both the green and white versions, and both looked very good. The orange and green versions share the same black front as the black version, while the white variant is white all over.
The Z3 Compact uses plastic covers for waterproofing everywhere but the conveniently open headphone jack
The design of the Xperia Z3 Compact isn't perfect, however, with the screen being a veritable magnet for fingerprints. I was often wiping the screen to rid it of paw marks, and though it's not a major issue in the grand scheme of things, it's never nice to have a touchscreen that makes you feel guilty about laying a finger on it.
Also while Sony's ability to cram a lot of power into a relatively small device should be applauded, the Xperia Z3 Compact has a habit of getting very hot during medium to heavy use. An hour's worth of browsing the internet over Wi-Fi made the body quite warm to touch.
A few minutes of using the camera along with some of its more intensive video modes again heats the Xperia Z3 Compact up and can cause the camera app to shut down unexpectedly.
-578-80.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
-580-90.jpg)
