Sony is back at the Consumer Electronics Show with a new OLED screen.But don't plan on hanging this one on the wall;it measures three-and-a-half inches.
By incorporating a super-bright,ultradetailed OLED(for organic light-emitting diode)touch screen in one of the company's top-of-the-line Cyber-shot cameras,Sony comes to this category a bit late,following the lead of Nikon and a couple of other digital imaging manufacturers.And OLED screens of any size still don't come cheap:the DSC-TX100V point-and-shoot will retail for$380 when it arrives.
OLED has been a once-and-future technology for a half-dozen years now,and unless some flat-panel maker shows up in Las Vegas with a surprise this year—Mitsubishi,perhaps?—the technology,at least at the consumer level,remains in CE limbo.So far,except for Sony's 11-inch,$2,500 TV,OLED has only been applied to small-screen uses,such as mobile devices,a Walkman and a few cameras.
At any rate,Sony has revamped most of its line of point-and-shoots,upping megapixels(the aforementioned TX100v employs a 16.2-mp Exmor R low-light CMOS sensor,as do a couple of other models)and adding the 3D weep Panorama?feature to a few,for the 17 folks out there who own Sony 3D televisions.Actually,we saw some stills taken with this feature displayed on a big screen,and the effect was very impressive.To this end,Sony wants us to know that this is the year that"3D goes personal."
To stay in the highly competitive race for low-end digicams as they evolve into impulse buys,Sony opens its pricing at$110 for the low-end DSC-W510,part of the expansive?model line up that extends to the$280 WX10,which includes a 7-times optical lens and Full HD capability for movies.The budget W510 has a wide-angle 4-times optical zoom lens,the(non-3D)Panorama function,12 megapixel capability and an image stabilization circuit.
All of the new Cyber-shots will be on sale in February and March,and a couple of as-yet-unannounced models will appear next month.
