Sony Xperia 10 VI

Revisiting my earlier notes about the Edge 40, it is time to summarize about 5–6 months of using an Xperia 10.

The good:

• Few bloatware compared to 8 years ago.
• I was asked to choose a browser on first setup. Firefox was offered, which I happily accepted, because that allows to install uBlock Origin. Web is actually usable now on mobile.
• No unasked-for automatic updates. I get notified which is ok, but I choose when to install and I get to choose when to reboot.
• No undesired screen turn on upon notifications.
• One full battery charge depletes in 8-or-more days of standby.

The mediocre:

• Basically phones are still too big. Can't reach the lower left corner of the screen area, cannot reach the top of the screen area at all. (This is when the lower right corner of the shell is resting in the right hand.)
• The setting "Show pop-up to choose the desired mode USB" does not exist in the normal menu. There is a tunable in the Developer Options however (which, of course, one needs to activate first by pressing 7× the "About" line).
• When connected to a USB-A port, it goes into the chosen mode (e.g. File Transfer/MTP). When connected to a USB-C/Thunderbolt port, it may take about 0–20 seconds for it to switch over. This is probably the same Host/Periphal mode consideration as with the Edge40.

The bad:

• The photo app does not allow manual control over the ISO value. When you set the shutter to 1/1000 ... 1/8000 in dark conditions, it just raises the ISO so hard you get blue noise. The Xperia XZ1 did a much better job here, allowing to control both ISO and Shutter Speed.
• No light indicator for charging.

Posted 2024-11-22 00:11 / Tags: Phones. / link

Notes on photo sphere/panoramic EXIF metadata

• Google's EXIF/XMP metadata tag specification for panoramic images
• Panorama images with sky are to have a negative value for the CroppedAreaTopPixels tag. (The panoramic viewer of Facebook ignores the value altogether, though, and assumes the horizon in the middle of the picture.)
• If a camera or software normally produces panoramic images with cylindrical projection, then doing a vertical capture actually produces a transverse cylindrical image. There is no standardized value for the EXIF ProjectionType field to cover this. (One option is to reproject them to equirectangular — which, again, is not very well supported.)
• Facebook's document on what tags to set
• The Facebook web interface insists that FullPanoHeightPixels be half the size of FullPanoWidthPixels. Else you get “no new photos were uploaded”.

/ Tags: Photo.