The W595 is the least heralded of Sony Ericsson’s trio of new Walkman phones today, but it seems like a decent enough mid-range music handset. It’s a slider phone with a 3.2-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, and a bundled 2GB Memory Stick Micro card to store tunes on.
Sony Ericsson is clearly keen to push the sharing aspects of its new Walkmans. Not in a music piracy sense, but instead with a new ’share jack’ accessory, letting two people plug headphones in at once. It’s good for us grown-ups who aren’t as confident blasting music out of our tinny speakers on the bus, like those young people. Tsk.
Anyway, the W595 is due on sale before Christmas, in a choice of four colours. I know you don’t want me to just say blue, white, grey or black, so here’s the official shades: Active Blue, Cosmopolitan White, Jungle Grey and Lava Black. Jungle Grey?!
Second up in Sony Ericsson’s morning of new music phones is the W302 Walkman, a more massmarket handset. It has a stock candybar design but is just 10.5mm thick.
There’s a two-megapixel camera inside, a built-in FM radio, Bluetooth stereo, and a bundled 512MB Memory Stick Micro card to store your tunes on. Is that enough for the average user though, given that the higher-spec W902 comes with an 8GB card? I guess you can buy a bigger card for the W302, but it seems pitched a bit low.
Anyway, the W302 offers Sony Ericsson’s TrackID music identification feature, and the company says it’s the most affordable Walkman phone yet. It’s due on sale by the end of this year, in a choice of Midnight Black or Sparkling White.
Sony Ericsson has taken the wrappers off three new Walkman music mobiles this morning, with the pick of the bunch being the W902.
It comes with an 8GB Memory Stick Micro card to store songs on, while Sony Ericsson is talking up its audio quality, promising much richer bass sounds and overall audio improvement. There are dedicated music keys, as you’d expect.
It’s other features aren’t half bad either though. The W902 sports a five-megapixel camera, a 2.2-inch screen, and built-in stereo speakers – with an optional (I think) stereo share jack, allowing two people to plug in headphones at once.
The W902 is due out before Christmas, in a choice of black, red or green models. Or, as Sony Ericsson puts it, ‘Volcanic Black’, ‘Wine Red’ and ‘Earth Green’.
The usually reliable Sony Ericsson Blog has news of a new SE handset, the W302. It’s a Walkman phone that’s otherwise the same as the existing S302 handset.
That means a two-megapixel camera, but presumably beefed-up music features. The phone will apparently be announced next week, and will go on sale sometime in October. I’m quite taken with its orange colour, although presumably operators who aren’t Orange may avoid that variant.
And looking at the blog post again, it may be a Photoshop mock-up in any case, which would be a shame. We’ll just have to wait for next week to find out.
You’d think Sony Ericsson would have got this right by now after dozens of Walkman releases, but nope - the first W910is to hit the market on Orange have been recalled after a number of faults.
Among the reported faults have been handsets switching themselves off after ten seconds, not answering calls or letting users make calls and not staying turned on when the battery is full.
Customers have reportedly had to return handsets several times because even replacements have been faulty. Orange has since instigated a recall of the first batch of handsets, despite claiming that ‘only a small number [of handsets] were affected’.
Both Sony Ericsson and Orange have claimed the problem is now resolved, so anyone who still has a faulty handset can return them to Orange stores or call Sony Ericsson’s customer services to arrange a (hopefully) working replacement.
The W910i was supposed to be one of Sony Ericsson’s biggest handsets this Christmas (alongside the K850i) so for the first batches to be faulty is obviously going to be setback.
[Via Mobile Today]
Sony’s Walkman handsets have been given a significant memory boost with the release of 4GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) cards for Sony Ericsson phones.
To give you an idea of the capacity of these cards, they can store up to 3,700 shots from a five-megapixel K850 Cybershot phone, or around 4,000 songs (Or 45 hours of video footage) on a W910 Walkman phone.
Couple this beauty with the ever-expanding internal memories on Sony Ericsson’s phones and you’ll soon find yourself not needing your iPod or digital camera - you’ll simply store everything on your mobile. Of course, that’s exactly what Sony wants!
As an added bonus, Sony’s new M2 cards will also come with a convenient M2 USB adaptor (right) for connecting to computers without Memory Stick card readers.
The products will be available later this month, although pricing is yet to be confirmed.
Sony Ericsson’s flagship ‘iPhone killer’ W960i isn’t appearing on these shores before Christmas.
With Apple’s iPhone and Nokia’s N95 8GB battling it out in the coming weeks, Sony Ericsson has taken the decision to delay the W960i’s launch until the new year.
According a Sony Ericsson marketing person, the phone will now be released in January due to the “crowded market” for phones before Christmas.
This is a shame as the device promised great things. While Sony Ericsson’s move seems like a sensible one when there’s so much competition, it is taking a chance that die-hard Sony Ericsson fans will be patient enough to sit out Christmas and resist the temptation to get an iPhone or Nokia N95 8GB.
The device certainly could be Sony Ericsson’s biggest Walkman phone yet. It boasts 8GB of on-board memory, a 2.6-inch touchscreen with the Symbian OS, a 3.2-megapixel camera, wi-fi and a new HBH-DS200 Bluetooth Stereo headset in the box.
Compared to the iPhone, it’s slightly shorter but thicker and is also lighter. The screen isn’t as good on the W960i, but it has a much better camera and 3G web browsing.
[Via Pocket Lint]
As part of its big announcement this week, which saw three new handsets unveiled, Sony Ericsson also revealed its plans for PlayNow.
PlayNow was originally an easy way to pre-listen to and then buy polyphonic ringtones from your Walkman handset. Since its launch in 2004 it’s been expanded to include mastertones (MP3 ringtones), games, full music tracks and other content.
Now Sony Ericsson’s said what it’ll do next: PlayNow Arena. From next year, PlayNow will a lot more advanced. In the Arena, users will still listen to and buy tracks and ringtones, but they’ll also be linked to Sony Ericsson’s TrackID, track identification service (kind of like Shazam).
You’ll be able to identify tracks with TrackID, then click to PlayNow to buy said tracks. PlayNow Arena will also feature TrackID charts, where the most searched-for tracks around the world will be listed. Mobile games will also be included in PlayNow, with a more open environment for trying and buying mobile games straight from your Sony Ericsson handset.
This isn’t all - customers will also be able to access PlayNow Arena from either both mobiles and PCs enabling OTA downloads to both, just like operators offer now with their music download services.
And that still isn’t all, because Sony Ericsson’s coup de grace is that the music tracks will be DRM-free. That’s right, there’ll be no limit on downloads or on what device the tracks are downloaded to. Blimey.
Sony Ericsson’s going to unveil three new handsets tomorrow, and in the best tradition of the blogosphere, details on them have already been leaked.
Sony Ericsson W890i
Perhaps the biggest news is the launch of the W890i, a slimline 3G Walkman phone. It’s an upgrade of the W880i, and has the latest version of PlayNow (4.0) and a 3.2-megapixel camera.
Sony Ericsson W380i
A second Walkman phone is also going to be announced - the low-end W380i. Again, this is another upgrade, this time of the W300i. It will apparently feature something called ‘gesture control’, although what this involves isn’t clear at time of writing.
Sony Ericsson K660i
Finally, the third handset is the 3G web-browsing phone, the K660i. Its selling point is that it will let users browse the mobile web in portrait/landscape modes and is controlled by a pointer cursor. Presumably this will be the latest Opera mobile web browser (Mini 4).
So there you have it, details of Sony Ericsson’s Christmas releases - two updates and a 3G web browsing handset. The three phones are almost certainly going to be well-made and popular handsets, but surely Sony Ericsson’s going to unveil more than this tomorrow?
Update: All three were announced as predicted, and all should be in stores before Christmas.
