Sony has confirmed that the Xperia Ear, first unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February, would make its way to Canada sometime “late summer.” The Xperia Ear is part of a new line of Xperia accessory products – the Xperia Eye clip camera, a small Xperia Projector, and for home automation, the Xperia Agent Hub. The Xperia Ear will be the first to make it to the market and is a combination of a small Bluetooth earpiece that is also a voice-controlled personal assistant – much like the Moto Hint. There is no indication of price, but it should be available through the usual big-box stores throughout Canada,
The number of people interested in the Sony Xperia Ear will vary – many people like stereo earphones and the Xperia Ear only works in one ear. The Xperia Ear is only compatible with Android smartphones and uses a single hardware button that is said to be so difficult to press that you will find yourself pushing the device further into your ear. Considering you need to be pushing that button quite a bit throughout the day to use it as your personal assistant, a touch key may have been a better solution. That button is your only control on the Xperia Ear, and it will support long-press actions that you configure through the Xperia Ear App.
The Xperia Ear can answer or reject incoming phone calls. With a long press, you can send a message to another person, hear about upcoming events, pause or play music, and play a startup message about news, traffic, time, etc. You can use a short press to make it act as a sort of Google Now by asking it for a weather forecast, the time, search through Wikipedia, send or listen to text messages, hear about your upcoming events, receive low battery notifications, and ask for street directions. It will help you hands-free navigate your way with your smartphone while driving and you can even replace Xperia Assistant with Google Now, but you will lose some of its functionality. The Sony Xperia Ear comes with a rather large cradle that doubles as a charger and stores enough juice to charge the Xperia Ear one time.