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BARCELONA — Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S5 smartphone will be at least the third to have a fingerprint sensor for security but it’s alone in letting you use that for general shopping, thanks to a partnership with PayPal.

The sensor brings convenience for entering passcodes and could encourage more people to lock their phones. But fingerprint security isn’t foolproof.

Here’s what to know as you consider whether to place your trust in it:

How does it work?

The S5 has a sensor on the home button, just like Apple’s iPhone 5s. On the S5, you train the phone to recognise your finger by swiping on it seven times. You also enter a passcode as a backup, so you’re not locked out if the device doesn’t recognise your print. On the iPhone, that can happen if your hand is greasy or wet, for instance.

The phone then converts the fingerprint information into a mathematical representation, known as a hash, and stores that in a secured location on the device. Samsung says that information stays on the device and is never shared.

When you want to unlock your phone, you simply swipe on the home button. A hash is again created and must match the one the phone already has. Otherwise, the phone stays locked.

You can do this with up to three fingers on the S5, compared with five on the iPhone. On the S5, you must swipe down. On the iPhone, you simply hold your finger on the home button, and you can do that sideways or upside down as well.

What can you do with the fingerprint?

All three devices let you skip the passcode and unlock the phone.

You can also train the HTC phone to open a particular app automatically depending on the finger used. Apple lets you use the finger to authenticate purchases through its iTunes store, but it’s keeping the system off-limits to outside parties. Samsung lets you make PayPal payments.

If you’re at a retail store that accepts mobile payments through PayPal’s app, for instance, you can use the fingerprint instead of your usual password. That’s also the case with online transactions using PayPal on the phone. The hash doesn’t get sent to PayPal. Rather, the phone verifies for PayPal that the fingerprint has been verified.

Anuj Nayar, senior director for global initiatives with eBay Inc.’s PayPal business, says there’s usually a trade-off between security and convenience. Beef up security, and it’s tough to use. Make it convenient, and open up windows for breaches. With fingerprint IDs, he says, you can have both.

Are you really getting security?

It’s more secure than not locking your phone with a passcode at all. It’s also more secure than using a four-digit passcode, as there’s a greater chance of guessing that than the particular hash used. But there’s never a guarantee.

Shortly after Apple started selling the iPhone 5s, a German hacking group said it managed to bypass the fingerprint system by using a household printer and some wood glue to create an artificial copy of a genuine fingerprint.

The group said the fingerprint ID system was easy to trick, though it’s not something easily pulled off in the real world. You need to have that specific phone and the fingerprint, for one thing. And then you compromise only that one phone.

Security experts point out that once a finger’s compromised, you can’t replace it the way you can a passcode. That doesn’t mean someone can use an S5 breach to unlock an iPhone, though, as the hash formulas used are typically proprietary and kept secret.

But it’s not a threat to take lightly, either.

Should you use it?

PayPal officials point out that behind the scenes, it’s still performing the usual anti-fraud checks. If the account is used to buy a television in California just five minutes after you buy coffee in New York, it’ll suspect something is up.

If the phone is lost or stolen, or your fingerprint is somehow compromised, you can contact PayPal to de-register that device from future use.

Drew Blackard, director of US product planning at Samsung Electronics Co., says other forms of authentication have their flaws, too. Android phones let you swipe a pattern on the screen in lieu of a passcode, but Blackard points out it’s possible to guess the pattern by examining the screen for smudges.

It’s not bulletproof security, but it’s more secure than existing methods, he says.

Despite the risks, Bennett says he sees potential.

“If it results in more people locking their phone,” he says, “it improves security.”

PARIS – Investigations in nine European countries have given statistical backing to claims that patients’ lives may be at risk when nurses are overworked, specialists said on Wednesday.

Published in The Lancet, the study touches on a sensitive topic in countries where health budgets are under strain.

Researchers looked at survival rates after surgery in 300 hospitals, and matched these against the workload and education of their nurses.

They looked at data from the surgeries of more than 420,000 patients aged over 50 who had common operations such as hip or knee replacement, appendix removal or gall bladder surgery.

The number of patients who died in hospital within 30 days of admission was low, on average. It ranged from 1 to 1.5 per cent depending on the country.

Within a country, though, the death rate varied widely according to the hospital. In some hospitals it could be less than 1 per cent, in others more than 7 per cent.

Two big factors correlated with higher mortality –– a bigger workload for nurses and a lower level of nurses’ education.

Each patient added to a nurse’s workload increased the risk of a patient dying by 7 per cent. Every 10 per cent increase in bachelor’s degree educated nurses was associated with a 7 per cent fall in this risk.

“Nurse staffing cuts to save money might adversely affect patient outcomes,” said the paper. “An increased emphasis on bachelor’s education for nurses could reduce preventable hospital deaths.”

It offered this statistical scenario: In hospitals where nurses cared for six patients each, and 60 per cent of them had bachelor’s degrees, the risk of patient death was nearly a third lower than in places where nurses cared for eight patients and 30 per cent had a degree.

The investigation was carried out in Belgium, England, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The findings in Europe closely mirror a previous probe in the United States, said Linda Aiken, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing, who led the research.

“Our data suggest that a safe level of hospital nursing staff might help to reduce surgical mortality, and challenge the widely held view that nurses’ experience is more important than their education,” she said in a press release.     

What a wonderful scientific world we live in these days where medical advancement has ensured we have longer, pain free lives. Most of the diseases can be diagnosed and treated by the innate skills of the physicians and surgeons. Jordan is a country especially popular as a healthcare hub in the Middle East, where scores of patients troop in on a regular basis. The doctors are exceptionally brilliant and have a cure for almost all bodily ailments. 

There is no dearth of psychologists and psychiatrists here too. The shrinks, as they are commonly called in colloquial slang, are people who look after our mental well-being. So if one is suffering from depression, melancholy, despair or an unexplained bout of sadness, one seeks them out. 

I was always intrigued with the idea of visiting a shrink. The closest I have ever come to one is via a Woody Allen movie. For some reason, a majority of his films have scenes that are shot in a shrink’s chamber. The doctor usually sits behind a desk while the patient half lies on a couch-like sofa. In this posture, the specialist listens to the constant chatter that pours forth from the sufferer. Occasionally, he jots down notes on a writing pad or if the prattle subsides, he prods the talker with some pertinent queries. 

I liked this portrayal of psychologists; I really did. I mean, I lived in a house where nobody had the time or inclination to listen to my complaints. And here was a person whose sole occupation was to hear me out. I could not wait to get myself to a Hollywood-type shrink. All I needed was an appropriate ailment which would help me get an appointment with one of them. 

I am not really an unhappy person so depression was ruled out. I do not have much patience for melancholia and sadness also but I do call myself a perfectionist and like to keep my home and hearth spotlessly neat and clean. I do not think that is a negative quality but if I presented it as an obsessive compulsive disorder then maybe the doctor would give me that much needed chatter session on the couch.  

Moreover, I was fascinated with both the words obsession and compulsion. The former means being continuously preoccupied with a fixed idea, feeling or emotion and the latter is an irresistible urge to behave in a particular manner despite the consequences. I admired obsessive compulsion. The only disturbing thing was the “disorder” term associated with it. 

Next day I called up the clinic and fixed a scheduled time with the consultant. At the appointed hour I presented myself at the hospital. The doctor made me sit at his desk while he excused himself to make a call. 

I saw his table was cluttered with knick-knacks. Before I could stop myself, I tidied it all up, putting the magazines in a neat stalk, pens in the pen stand and the used coffee cup in the side tray. 

“What are you doing?” asked the shrink.

“I am just putting things in order,” I smiled. 

“Why?” he inquired.

“It was messy so I cleared it,” I replied.

“It was my mess,” he said belligerently. 

“But it was on my side of the table,” I insisted. 

“Confirmed OCD,” he stated.

“You or me?” I muttered under my breath.

“What did you say?” he thundered. 

“‘Nothing! I have to go, sorry,” I said, beating a hasty retreat. 

BARCELONA – They are free to download, fun to play, and fiendishly addictive: Mobile games like Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds and Clash of Clans want to get you hooked, then get your money.

Whether you are paying to obtain extra lives, buy “gems” to use as a virtual currency, or just to carry on playing without delay, the “freemium” games boom is a money-spinner for the most successful developers.

In-app purchases helped to drive up spending on mobile games by more than 60 per cent to $16.5 billion (12 billion euros) in 2013, according to research house IHS.

“What we have done is bring the thought processes and skills of selling and marketing more clearly into the game,” said Nicholas Lovell, author of The Curve, a book about making money in a world of free digital content.

In any given month, only about one in 20 players of a given “freemium” game makes an in-app purchase, Lovell said, meaning the most devoted end up paying the most, while others enjoy it for free.  

“If you are heavily invested in a game world and you are putting your emotions and your friendships in that game world then the psychology can become a lot more powerful,” he said ahead of the February 24-27 World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Once a player has downloaded a free game, the holy grail of designers is to keep him or her playing, hopefully with various 10-20 minute bouts in a day and a longer session or two in the evening.

The most committed players are the most likely to spend, said Lovell, who is also the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog that advises games developers on business strategy.

For example, a player may pay to avoid waiting 24 hours before advancing to a key goal. 

Then there is the chance to avoid “the grind”.

A player might need 10,000 gold coins to obtain a crucial object, requiring the completion of 1,000 quests, each of which earns 10 coins. 

Within a “freemium” mobile game, you can spend weeks to complete the “grind” of 1,000 quests or just pay some money to avoid the task altogether. 

“That devalues it in some people’s eyes. It is not evil. It is bloody annoying if you are the kind of person who thinks like that,” Lovell said.

‘Atmosphere of fear’       

The industry expert welcomed new principles released by Britain’s Office of Fair Trading to ensure parents authorise children’s in-app purchases and to prevent unfair and aggressive sales techniques to which minors may be susceptible.

Apple and others should introduce a child mode that lets parents block unauthorised activities on their smartphones and tablets, he said. 

Nevertheless, Lovell believed variable pricing would become a model for all digital content, not just games.

Brian Blau, analyst at technology research house Gartner Inc., said consumers were making in-app purchases simply because they wanted to play games. 

NEW YORK – People who eat a vegetarian diet tend to have lower blood pressure than non-vegetarians, according to a new review of past studies.

Researchers said for some people, eating a vegetarian diet could be a good way to treat high blood pressure without medication.

Vegetarian diets exclude meat, but may include dairy products, eggs and fish in some cases. They emphasise foods of plant origin, particularly vegetables, grains, legumes and fruits.

High blood pressure contributes to a person's risk of heart disease, stroke, kidney disorders and other health problems. For many people, the only treatment has been medication, but that means costs and possible side effects, lead author Yoko Yokoyama told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

"If a diet change can prevent blood pressure problems or can reduce blood pressure, it would give hope to many people," Yokoyama said. She is a researcher at the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Centre in Osaka, Japan.

"However, in order to make healthful food choices, people need guidance from scientific studies," she said. "Our analysis found that vegetarian diets lower blood pressure very effectively, and the evidence for this is now quite conclusive."

According to the American Heart Association, blood pressure readings under 120mm Hg systolic and 80mm Hg diastolic (120/80) are considered normal. High blood pressure starts at 140/90.

The new review, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, combined results from 39 previous studies, including 32 observational studies and seven controlled trials.

"Observational studies show what happens when people have chosen their own diets and stuck with them, often for years," Yokoyama said. "Controlled trials are different — a diet is given to people who had not tried it before, and that will show the effect of beginning a new way of eating."

Together the studies included close to 22,000 people.

The researchers found that in the observational studies, people who had been eating a vegetarian diet had an average systolic blood pressure that was about 7mm Hg lower than among meat-eaters and a diastolic blood pressure that was 5mm Hg lower.

Participants in the clinical trials who were given vegetarian diets to follow had, on average, a systolic blood pressure that was 5mm Hg lower and a diastolic blood pressure that was 2mm Hg lower than participants in control groups who were not on vegetarian diets.

"Unlike drugs, there is no cost to a diet adjustment of this type, and all the ‘side effects' of a plant-based diet are desirable: weight loss, lower cholesterol, and better blood sugar control, among others," Yokoyama said.

She said a plant-based diet is typically low in fat and high in fibre, so it helps people lose weight, which, in turn, causes a healthy drop in blood pressure.

"But there is more," Yokoyama said. "Plant-based foods are often low in sodium and are rich in potassium, and potassium lowers blood pressure."

The same foods are also very low in saturated fat — the type of fat in meat and cheese — and eating less saturated fat means blood can circulate more easily, she explained.

"I would encourage physicians to prescribe plant-based diets as a matter of routine, and to rely on medications only when diet changes do not do the job," Yokoyama said. "And I would encourage everyone to try a plant-based diet, and especially to introduce plant-based diets to their children — they could prevent many health problems."

Alice Lichtenstein, director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University in Boston, said the results of the review are encouraging, but added that it didn't take sodium in the diet and lifestyle factors into account.

"Individuals who adhere to vegetarian diets are likely to use fewer processed foods, the major source of dietary sodium, and adhere to healthy lifestyles behaviours such as maintaining a body weight in the optimal range and engaging in regular physical activity," Lichtenstein told Reuters Health in an e-mail. She was not involved in the new research.

"Until we understand the contribution of these factors we can't attribute the effect observed solely to adhering to a vegetarian diet," Lichtenstein explained.

"We certainly would not encourage substituting a slice of quiche for a grilled chicken breast for dinner, due to the sodium, calories and saturated fat," she said.

What's more, the findings do not mean that people taking blood pressure medication should go off their drugs in favour of diet changes without talking to a doctor.

Yokoyama said doctors who would like to prescribe diet changes need tools.

NEW YORK — Samsung is banking on people shaping up this spring.

The company on Monday unveiled its new Galaxy S5 smartphone, which is set to go on sale in April, along with a pair of fitness-themed watches. And many of the features included on the devices focus on fitness.

Considering America’s continued fascination with fitness and fitness products, this is probably a good idea. What Samsung has attempted to do is combine the best attributes of the top-of-the-line fitness trackers currently on the market with those of its own phones and smartwatches.

The S5 and the watches were unveiled at an event at the Mobile World Congress wireless show in Barcelona, Spain. I had a chance to briefly test out all three products in New York on Monday.

The S5 includes a built-in heart rate monitor, pedometer and fitness tracker, though I’m not sure how useful they actually are. For instance, to check your heart rate, you hold your finger over a sensor on the back of the phone — something I can’t imagine doing in the middle of a jog.

True fitness buffs will probably head straight for Samsung’s Gear Fit smartwatch, which also does all of those things, but in a much more user-friendly way. Want to check your heart rate? Just open up the app for that and it gives you a reading within seconds.

While many people have become accustomed to wearing fitness bands either constantly or for their workouts, I think a lot of them would balk at going running with, or perpetually being tethered to, a phone as big as the S5.

It’s worth mentioning too that the Fit Gear is very nicely styled. I have to admit, I wasn’t a fan of Samsung’s first Galaxy Gear smartwatch, because it felt heavy and clunky and was just too big for a normal-sized woman’s wrist. But the Fit solves that problem. It’s thin, light and features a curved color screen. If you don’t mind wearing something like a Fitbit Force or a Nike FuelBand, you won’t mind this product either.

The trade-off is you can’t place or answer a call from the Fit, but it will notify you of things like calls, e-mails and text messages. There’s also no camera.

Samsung’s new Gear 2 watch also comes with basic fitness features including the heart rate monitor and pedometer. While it’s still too chunky for me, it is significantly lighter and thinner than the original version. Unlike the Fit, you can still place calls from it and shoot pictures and video from its camera.

And unlike Samsung’s first smartwatch, the new ones pair with a host of Samsung phones, giving consumers more options for their primary device.

Samsung also plans to introduce a slightly cheaper version called the Gear 2 Neo, which won’t have a camera or come in as many colours. The company has yet to announce pricing for any of the new products.

Fitness aside, the S5 phone includes some other significant upgrades from its predecessor. Some of the biggest changes are in its camera. Its 16 megapixels make it sharper than the S4, which had just 13. It’s also designed to focus faster and lets you blur the foreground or background of an image to emphasise a subject.

The phone also has a fingerprint sensor to use in place of a pass code to unlock the phone or make mobile payments. And it is splash and dust resistant, which is bound to prolong the phone’s life for many people.

An added incentive for parents is the phone’s “Kids Mode”, which lets you hand your phone off to your child without fear that they’ll stream something inappropriate from your Netflix cue or access your e-mail.

In short, the S5’s improvements might be enough to entice current Samsung fans to upgrade their devices, while its fitness features could draw some converts as well, especially those interested in purchasing a smartwatch to go along with it.

BARCELONA, Spain — BlackBerry will release a low-cost phone in Indonesia in April and plans a broader release of a phone that restores a beloved row of control keys with a track pad.

The Indonesia phone, the Z3, will sell for less than $200 without subsidies, the company said Tuesday. It will later expand to other markets in southeast Asia. BlackBerry Ltd. CEO John Chen said a version with faster, 4G connectivity is planned for the rest of the world “sometime in the future before I die”.

It’s the first phone made under a new five-year partnership with Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles products in vast factories in China.

Meanwhile, Chen said it will restore the keys in a new phone he termed “Classic”. He said the new Q20 is a response to lacklustre sales of last year’s Q10, which has a physical keyboard but lacks the track pad or keys for functions such as going back. He said the company got many complaints about that.

BlackBerry also announced plans to expand its services for businesses needing secure communications, particularly in regulated industries such as health care and financial services. There are plans, for instance, to go beyond securing just e-mail and messaging.

It’s part of the company’s plan to focus on its strengths in business services. BlackBerry Ltd. strayed from that as it tried to lure consumers with new devices.

The BlackBerry was the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people and other consumers before Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, showing that phones could handle much more than e-mail and calls. BlackBerry was slow in modernising its operating system, and once it did, the much-hyped system flopped.

Chen was brought in as CEO late last year after talks to sell the company collapsed. Although he has been credited with turning around Sybase, a data company that was sold to SAP in 2010, Chen has acknowledged that reviving BlackBerry will be his most “complicated” challenge.

In the latest quarter, ending November 30, BlackBerry Ltd. reported a $4.4 billion loss and a 56 per cent drop in revenue. But the company said it had plenty of cash to engineer a turnaround.

The new partnership with Foxconn will help reduce much of BlackBerry’s manufacturing costs. Foxconn, known for its manufacturing contract work on Apple’s iPhones and iPads, will jointly design and manufacture most BlackBerry devices and manage inventory of the devices.

Chen said BlackBerry will now target the heavily regulated industries that require greater security. It will simplify its pricing and let people upgrade to the latest systems for free this year. It will also offer free services this year for companies that had left BlackBerry for rivals.

BARCELONA – Smartphone makers are fighting for space on your wrist and your head, lucrative real estate for a new wave of high-tech devices if only they can persuade you to wear them.

Manufacturers unleashed a battery of new wearable devices at the world’s biggest mobile fair in Barcelona, Spain, trying to carve out new revenue sources in developed markets where smartphone sales are slowing.

From smart bracelets that track your fitness to watches and glasses that let you take a call or check text messages and e-mail, these gadgets are the new stars of the February 24-27 Mobile World Congress.

Wearable devices first became commercially viable in 2013, said David Sovie, head of electronics and technology at Dublin-based consultancy group Accenture.

“I think 2014 is when you will start to see more mass market, or at least wider adoption of these technologies,” he said.

According to an Accenture study of 23,000 consumers in 23 countries, there is a large appetite for such products, with 46 per cent saying they were interested in smart watches and 42 per cent in smart glasses.

The first target is fitness fanatics, wooed with bracelets that record the number of steps they take, the distance travelled, calories used, or even their heartbeat.

US firm Fitbit, leader with more than 60 per cent of the market for wearable fitness devices, has invited congress visitors to join a contest by strapping on a bracelet during their stay in Barcelona. The winner is the competitor who has moved most.

“We will have 1,000 participants by the end of the week,” said Benoit Raimbault, head of marketing for Europe, stressing that the bracelet prods you to “move more, eat better and sleep better”.

“Today the market for fitness bands is growing well and this segment will be exploited over the next years,” said Annette Zimermann, analyst at technology consultants Gartner Inc.

Sony Mobile revealed on the opening day of the fair its SmartBand SWR10, a bracelet that comes with an application allowing users to log events and photographs taken during the day as well as tracking how far they walk and checking their sleep cycle.

Smart watches, connected by wireless Bluetooth technology to the smartphone, are still trying to find a mass market, however, said Zimermann. “Smart watches still lack good design and functionality so uptake of those devices have been very slow,” she explained.  

Research house Canalys nevertheless predicts a boom in connected bracelets and watches, with  sales surpassing 17 million units this year and approaching 45 million in 2017.

“It’s about having an independent product that works as a standalone and does not need to be connected to your smartphone,” said Archana Vidyasekar, specialist at analysts Frost & Sullivan.

“I think that is going to define the success of the market in the consumer industry.”

The first elegant smartwatch

Samsung was one of the first heavyweights to enter the market, releasing last September its Galaxy Gear smartwatch, which lets a user read text messages and e-mails, check online services such as the weather and make calls. 

But with a lukewarm reception from critics and, according to analysts, disappointing sales, Samsung launched a new version Sunday, the Gear 2, which includes a camera, TV remote control and a heart rate sensor.

Chinese smartphone maker Huawei revealed a connected watch of its own on the same day, a TalkBand, to be sold for 99 euros ($136).

Hours later, South Korean manufacturer LG said it would launch its first smartwatch in 2014.

Small Finnish firm Creoir says its model, Ibis, is “the first elegant smartwatch”.

“All the connected watches are with sports designs or geeks designs; my wife wouldn’t wear that,” said Creoir marketing chief Ismo Karali.

Already famous though not yet on sale, Google Glass is the showpiece of the third category of wearable device: connected glasses that let you check your e-mails, for example, with no more than a glance.

“I have been using it for about a month, but they are very intuitive, I gave it to my six-year-old daughter and she was able to figure it out within minutes,” said Cameron Green head of mobile business at technical standards group GS1, who has been testing the Google Glass.

BARCELONA, Spain — Samsung’s new smartphone will have a built-in heart rate monitor as the Korean electronics company tries to turn its devices into lifestyle products.

The Galaxy S5 also has a larger screen than its predecessor, at 5.1 inches (12.95cm), instead of 5 inches, and a sharper camera, with a resolution of 16 megapixels, up from 13 megapixels.

Samsung Electronics Co. is also unveiling a fitness band, Gear Fit, to complement two new computerised watches announced Sunday.

Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker, made the latest announcement during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

BARCELONA, Spain — Sony is borrowing innovations from its audio and camcorder businesses and incorporating its new Xperia Z2 smartphone with noise-cancelling technology and ultra-high-definition video recording.

Noise cancellation works with an in-ear headset sold separately for 60 euros ($82), while the Z2’s built-in camera can capture video in so-called 4K resolution, an emerging standard that offers four times the details as current high-definition video.

Kazuo Hirai, president and CEO of Sony Corp., described Sony’s new lineup as “products that are built on the shoulders of 60 years of design, engineering and artistic excellence”.

Monday’s announcement at the Mobile World Congress wireless show in Barcelona, Spain, comes just weeks after Sony said it was selling its Vaio personal computer operations and making its Bravia TV business a subsidiary company. Sony also plans to cut its global workforce by about 3 per cent, or 5,000 people, by the end of March 2015.

Sony, once an electronics powerhouse when its Walkman music players defined what portable gadgets should be, has had difficulty keeping up with Samsung and other rivals in various consumer electronics.

Phones are no different. Despite favorable reviews, Sony phones haven’t had much traction in an industry dominated by Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

With the Z2, Sony is trying to innovate on hardware, while many of the groundbreaking features in rival devices have been in their software.

The Z2 sports the same 20.7 megapixel camera found in its predecessors, the Z1 and the Z1s. Most other smartphone cameras have eight to 13 megapixels. The Z2 is waterproof, like the Z1 phones, and its screen is slightly larger, at 5.2 inches  (13.2cm) diagonally instead of 5 inches (12.7cm).

At Monday’s announcement event, Sony also demonstrated a SmartBand fitness accessory that works with a Lifelog app on the phone to record your day. You see key moments on a timeline, including photos taken and messages sent and received. As your day progresses on the timeline, you see the number of steps and calories burned to that point.

Sony also announced a high-end tablet and a separate, mid-range smartphone.

The tablet is also called the Xperia Z2 and features a 10.1-inch screen, larger than most full-size tablets. It is also waterproof. The Wi-Fi-only model weights 426 grams (0.94 pound), which is lighter than Apple’s lightweight iPad Air, despite the Z2’s larger size.

Sony’s Xperia M2, meanwhile, is meant as a cheaper alternative to the Z2. Its camera isn’t as powerful, at only eight megapixels, and the screen is only 4.8 inches. Still, the camera is the same as what the iPhone offers, and it’s larger than the iPhone’s four inches (10cm).

Sony is making a version of the M2 with two SIM card slots, something in demand in emerging markets, where plans vary so much that people often have service with multiple carriers and use what’s most economical for the circumstance.

Both Z2 devices and the SmartBand will be available in March, while the M2 is slated for April. The SmartBand will sell for 99 euros ($136). Prices for the phones and tablet weren’t announced, nor were any specific US plans. Sony sometimes makes phones available in the US later than elsewhere around the world.