It’s a Walkman phone… on steroids!

Sony Ericsson W950i
$TBA – coming September
www.sonyericsson.com.au

Remember the Walkman? Until the iPod came along, it was THE way to listen to music. All those tapes that only stored one hour of music… it all seems so limited today. But while the iPod phenomenon ensured that the Walkman had been eclipsed, it was not permanent. Besides a new DVD playing Walkman for portable movies (which we’ll cover soon), Sony Ericsson released a Walkman branded phone not that long ago, and have just upgraded the entire line with new models at all the price points, in all major configurations. There’s the candy bar model, the slider, the flip phone Walkman and now the iPod-esque Walkman – with big LCD colour touch screen, 4GB of internal memory capable of storing up to 4000 tracks (although that would be using the eAAC codec to compress the music, with regular mp3s it’d be around 1000 tracks), and a fully functional 3G smartphone for speedily surfing the Web, checking your email, playing games, running paid and free software you can download from the Internet, a built-in FM radio lets you listen to your favourite stations and more. A pair of very decent headphones is thrown in and Bluetooth wireless headphone compatibility is standard. It has a touch screen and stylus, so you can write your messages on screen and see them converted into text – or just use the keypad with good ol’ predictive text input.

Sadly there’s no Memory Stick Pro Duo or M2 Memory Card socket for extra expansion, but 4Gb is still a pretty hefty chunk of space to have on your phone. Music playback buttons on the front of the phone plus a dedicated Walkman key show this is a true music phone and given the high quality of the entire package – the phone, the operating system, the music player functionality and the vast storage – this will be Sony Ericsson’s highest specced and best Walkman phone to date.

We’re seeing some real salvos launched in the combo mp3 player/mobile phone world, and we haven’t even seen what Apple have lined up yet. So, while a real ‘iPod phone’ is yet to come, it’s going to have to be a lot better to really impress. A Walkman phone, or current model iPod? It’s a tough choice. You be the judge!

Sony’s Digital Photography Competition

Sony is hosting a photo competition that anyone can enter. Capture that ’special photo’, and you could have it included in the upcomign campaign for Sony’s first Digital SLR camera, the DSLR-A100. For full details, visit www.sony.com.au/dslr. Be sure to get snapping – the competition ends on October 31.

Alex Zaharov-Reutt

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Entry was posted on Thursday, August 17th, 2006 at 4:07 am under Media players.

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