BARCELONA -- Sony's new Xperia X smartphones are slick, but even cooler are the concept products the company unveiled.
Building on its rad Life Space UX products, Sony announced at Mobile World Congress a couple of new intelligent concept devices, including an adorable little robot called the Xperia Agent, that are designed to help users live a smarter connected lifestyle.
The Xperia concept devices are part of Sony's initiative to help users reconnect with reality. Instead of constantly interacting with your gadgets, Sony wants them to adapt to you and your environment.
"Sony Mobile envisions this new category as intelligent devices that understand preferences, activities and behavior, to provide useful and contextual information," the company wrote in an official Sony Mobile blog post.
Though the devices are conceptual, they are provide a glimpse at what could come in the future. (Well, Sony's vision of the future, at least.)
Xperia Agent
Sony envisions the Xperia Agent personal assistant robot as a kind of Amazon Echo/R2-D2 hybrid. The little robot has a round head that turns and digital "eyes" that give it some personality. It looks so damn cute. If you're gonna have a robot in your home, it's important it looks friendly.
The Agent can use its built-in projector to display useful information like the news or weather. It can also project photos and videos.
It'll reportedly be able to respond to voice commands and gestures. As a communications tool, Sony says the Agent can be used to make calls, send messages and update social networks using dictation.
The Xperia agent robot too adorb pic.twitter.com/54ZbyWvSzq— Raymond Wong (@raywongy) February 22, 2016
There's not a whole lot of specs for the Xperia Agent. Right now, the projections are non-interactive, but that could change for future models or if the Agent is ever released.
Sony also sees the Agent being a smart hub of sorts, connecting to smart home appliances and controlling them.
Xperia Ear
The realest device of the bunch, the Xperia Ear is a wireless earbud that fits in your ear and works very much like the Moto Hint.
Scheduled for a release this summer, the Xperia Ear connects to Android phones through NFC or Bluetooth and lets you use voice commands to perform tasks like making calls, texting and getting directions.
Checking out the Xperia Ear pic.twitter.com/RX03tAMOHo— Raymond Wong (@raywongy) February 22, 2016
The Xperia Ear will come in a number of different colors and its case doubles as a charger.
Xperia Eye
The Xperia Eye is Sony's own version of a life-logging camera and is very similar to the Narrative Clip. It has a 360-degree spherical lens on one side and can be worn on a shirt collar or around your neck, or mounted onto things like a bicycle's handlebar. Sony also showed off a waterproof housing, a carabiner clip and a tripod for the camera at its booth.
Xperia Eye camera concept pic.twitter.com/9WBCQNQ4Tv— Raymond Wong (@raywongy) February 22, 2016
The camera's designed to automatically take photos at set intervals to capture life's moments so you can worry less about taking photos and just live life.
Sony says the camera responds to voice commands and has built-in facial recognition technology, but we didn't get to see those features in action.
Xperia Projector
The Xperia Projector is yet another portable interactive projector from Sony and it's similar to the prototype projector we saw at IFA, but it has built-in voice controls. Users can project different apps and media onto surfaces like a table or the wall and then touch them to manipulate them.
In one demo, Sony showed the Xperia Projector projecting screens onto a table with a calendar you could swipe through and a notes app that you could make doodles on.
Sony didn't provide details on how bright the projections could be or what sizes they could span. The projections shown were quite small and not particularly bright, to be honest.
In another concept demo, you could use the built-in camera to make a video call.
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