iPhone 5 to have 8mp camera by Sony

In a recent interview, Sony CEO Howard Stringer said that his company was gearing up to supply Apple with a powerful 8 megapixel camera, most likely for use in its forthcoming iPhone 5. The delay in the phone could be attributed to Sony's sensor plant being damaged in Sendai by the tsunami on March 11.

Sony unveils slimmer PS3: $299, arrives September 1 in US

Sony has confirmed the rumors and announced the arrival of the new slim PS3.  It’ll be out in the first week of September (September 1 in NA and Europe, September 3 for Japan), and will retail for $299 (or 300 Euro, or 29,980 Yen). It’s smaller and lighter, has a 120GB HDD and consumes 34 percent less power.  So if you have been holding off buying that new blu-ray player, you have no more excuses.

Sony HDR-TG5 makes world's smallest Full HD camcorder smaller, adds GPS

About a year ago Sony introduced the Handycam HDR-TG1, a painfully pricey pistol-grip camcorder with relatively decent specs for its tiny, titanium, travel-sized body: 1920x1080 AVCHD video, 2.7-inch touch-screen LCD, 10X zoom optically stabilized lens and a 2.4-megapixel ClearVid Exmor CMOS sensor. Now Sony’s replacing it with the HDR-TG5, still overly expensive with almost identical insides and outsides, but updated with 16GB built-in memory and geotagging support with Navteq maps. The company’s tweaked the menu interface and added its Smile Shutter technology as well.

On one hand, I’m a fan of geotagging and it’s naturally suited for compact, travel-friendly devices. However, as I said of the first rollout in the HDR-XR520V, video isn’t quite ready for geotagging; unlike photos, there’s no metadata standard for storing the information with the file. As a result, Sony has to store it in a sidecar file with data that most applications won’t know how to parse. And then you’re stuck using Sony’s Picture Motion Browser software.

So the real question becomes is it worth paying $1,000 for geotagging, especially given how primitive (or more accurately, absent) support is for metadata on video files? And I must be missing some key piece of market research indicating that people want to spend that much on an everyday camcorder to keep in their pockets, since JVC jumped in to the pool recently, too, with its Everio X. I’ll leave you to ponder those questions. However, for those of you who think they’re worth it, the HDR-TG5 will be available in May. It’ll use the same accessories as the TG1, including the kit with an extra battery, travel charger and pouch and $100 Sony VCL-HGE07TB wide-angle conversion lens.

source:cnet

Sony's CyberShot DSC-HX1 camera. It's official March release.

Sony is got some nice goodies for PMA this year. The CyberShot DSC-HX1 rumors have been floating around for days. It’s the company’s first digital camera with sweep panorama technology for up to 224-degree horizontal and 154-degree vertical panorama shots with the push of a button. It’s also sporting a 20x optical zoom, 1/2.4-inch Exmor CMOS sensor for 10 frames per second at 9.1 megapixel resolution, a Sony G lens and 1080p HD movie recording. It could be out by the end of the month.

For a detailed look, go to the best digital photo site around, DPreview.