One major problem for owners of Sony Ericsson Xperia smartphones is if you own a Mac, you were unable to update your handsets to the latest version of Android. Both the Sony Ericsson Update Service and PC Companion are only compatible with Windows meaning those with a Mac were left to use a friend’s PC, or stay on old outdated software such as Android 1.6 in the case of the Xperia X10 when Android 2.1 was finally released.

This is fortunately set to change though. Sony Ericsson recently released an app called “Sony Ericsson Bridge for Mac” which allowed you to transfer music, videos and photos but, not update.  Bridge for Mac will be updated to version 2.0 shortly though which will finally allow Mac users to update Xperia smartphones. Unfortunately there isn’t a specific release date for the update as of yet but, at least it will become possible soon.

The recently announced Xperia S is now available to pre-order in the UK. The Xperia S is the first phone to be released from Sony following their buy out of Ericsson from the joint venture and looks set to continue in the steps of the 2011 Xperia range.

Clove have announced that they will be selling the Sony Xperia S in black starting from March 5th 2012. The sim free price for the Xperia S is £467.99 through Clove, while Play have the release date down as March 6th and a price tag of £449.99. You can also pre-order the Sony Xperia S from ebuyer for £429.99 but, they have an expected release date of March 12th.

I’m sure most of us have seen this sort of video before but, it’s not every day that a time lapse video is created with a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S. The Xperia Arc S doesn’t come with a time lapse feature built in but, there are many that you can download off the Android Market. The owner of this very cool time lapse video doesn’t say what app was used to create it.

YouTube user zyavar does however say, that the time lapse video of the London Eye was created using 1862 photos taken over 2 hours 35 minutes from a London hotel room. You can check out the London Eye time lapse video below. Let us know in the comments if you’ve created any time lapse videos using your Xperia phones.

Several PlayStation Portable (PSP) titles for ‘PlayStation Certified Devices’ have appeared on the ESRB – Entertainment Software Rating Board that will add to the previously released PlayStation One titles that are currently available through the PlayStation Certified program.

Titles such as flOw, Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, Daxter are listed along with a range of Pinball Heroes games inspired by previously released Sony titles including UnCharted, Hot Shots Golf, ModNation Racers and MotorStorm. The games should be available to play on the Xperia Play, Xperia Arc, Xperia Acro (and Acro HD), Xperia S and Xperia ion along with the two Sony tablets , the S and the P tablets, which are both PlayStation Certified devices.

Alongside the other two ‘hardware’ additions to the Sony Xperia Smart Extras range, Sony have also announced the arrival of exciting new product – Xperia SmartTags into the Smart Extras family.

SmartTags are basically tags that use NFC (near field communication) technology to communicate with any Android smartphone capable of using NFC. The Xperia SmartTags can be configured to change the profile on a mobile handset when the phone touches the tag. As an example, you could take one tag and configure it so that when you swipe it with your phone, the tag changes the phone profile to turn on WiFi, turn the phone onto silent, open an app and so on.

Well, NFC isn’t a fast food restaurant thats for sure. The acronym stands for Near Field Communication and is a technology that allows wireless communication between devices. Sony have added NFC technology to their latest range of handsets and have also designed a range of NFC tags to enhance the use of those handsets.

Fortunately for any of us in the dark about  what NFC can do for us and our handset that will make our lives easier/better, Sony have also gone to the trouble of explaining exactly how NFC integrates with their handsets (and indeed most NFC enabled mobile handsets to be fair) in their article on the Sony Ericsson Developers World blog. The article is well worth a read even if you aren’t intending rushing out to buy a brand new Xperia S as soon as it is released, NFC has for a while now been touted as the future of some forms of wireless communication and we do expect to see the technology used a lot more in the future so it might be time to swat up on where NFC is taking us before it arrives!