Sony Ericsson on Monday announced the third in its series of Walkman-branded phones, and the second to sport a swivel form factor. However, unlike the first two phones, the W550 is aimed at game enthusiasts, although some will notice that the phone is essentially identical to the W600 - Sony's second Walkman phone.

The W550 sports a 1.3-megapixel camera with 256MB of internal memory. It plays back MP3 and AAC audio file formats, and features up to 30 hours of battery life per charge. The phone is tri-band capable (900/1800/1900 MHz), unlike its predecessor, the W600, which also included the 850 MHz band.

The rest of the feature set reads the same as the W600. However, the design of the phone will allow it to be flipped on its side to use buttons on the left and right of the screen for two-handed control.

"The W550 is an exciting product that combines music, imaging and game playing to offer consumers fun and entertainment wherever they are, while still being a great phone," Steve Walker, Sony Ericsson’s Head of Product Marketing said.

Three games will come preinstalled with the phone, including 3D versions Worms Forts: Under Seige 3D from THQ Wireless, Extreme Air Snowboarding, and a multiplayer version of Midway's Gauntlet. Multi-player and peer-to-peer gaming is possible over a Bluetooth connection.

Also included with the phone is a full Web browser, which will either allow the user to view a page as intended or shrink the page to fit in a single column.

Two versions of the phone will be made available at retail, including the W550i for Europe, Africa, the Middle East and much of Asia, and the W550c for the Chinese market.

No announcement was made on American availability for the W550, but Sony Ericsson said a quad-band W600i with Edge capability would launch stateside in early Q4 2005.