RSSNew Walkman Phone Offers 4GB, 3G
By Ed Oswald | Published February 15, 2006, 1:30 PM
Sony Ericsson's line of Walkman phones has been a modest success, the company revealed on Tuesday, announcing that nearly 3 million units have been sold. The company also unveiled its latest addition to the line, the sleek W950i.
The dark purple-colored phone will run on the Symbian operating system and will be UMTS-capable for connectivity to high-speed networks. A touch screen provides easy access to music files and 4GB of flash memory storage would put it in line with Apple's iPod Nano.
While the focus of the W950i Walkman phone is entertainment, Sony Ericsson said its choice of the Symbian OS would also make it useful in business applications. A multitude of third party programs are available for the operating system, which has long been offered by rival Nokia.
The phone would be the manufacturer's third to be based on the popular smartphone OS this year.
As with most of the Walkman phones, no announcement of a U.S. model has been made. Two versions would be available initially: one for Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and another for China dependent on the availability of 3G services.
The W950i will come with Disc2Phone, a software application that would allow a user to transfer music from the PC, and supports the capability to be used with a cellular carrier's direct download services.
Sony Ericsson said the W950i would be released in the third quarter of this year at a price of 300 to 400 euros ($350 to $450 USD).
Remember the Clie? Looks like the Clie with the Palm OS changed to Symbian and the phone function added. The little scroll wheel on the side is the same too. That is one function every small device should have. However its Sony, I wont be using it.
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|My God...
plays just about anything I'd want it to, 3G, SymbianOS.
Yum.
Too bad though....
"No announcement of a U.S. model has been made."
And I'm sure they'll hack all the good s*** out of it before it gets to the states.
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|Lets hope you don't have to use the horrendous Connect software to manage the music on it..
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|It doesn't have a camera, anyone noticed?
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|I'm glad. Unless they put a really good camera in it, i don't care. This way the phone can be really slim.
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|I think they're trying to ditch the camera phone concept here with the W series and really emphasize the phone's MP3 player capabilities. That's why, IMO.
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|Does it have PTT?
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|It's nice to see the jogdial making a comeback. From the photo it looks like even the buttons are touch sensitive.
But as with many phones these days, I'm not sure if I want to be stuck with using their proprietary port connected headset to listen to music.
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|Looks very nice & I need a new phone too.
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|Wow, what an awesome phone! Too bad it won't be compatible with Verizon huh...
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|4 gb of flash memory eh? i'm interested now. wonder how well it syncs to outlook.
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|The best cell design ever, imho. O_O
Maybe my next cell, btw, anybody know which music format will be supported?
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|I have the W600i and it reads pretty much any format except wma :(
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|Sounds perfect. Reads all the formats people in the know would actually use, while keeping it from kids who are better off without. :P
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|However, it's Sony. Too bad.
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|Agreed, suh.
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|But it's also an Ericsson :) (SonyEricsson is a free standing company owned 50% by the Swedish mobile company Ericsson and 50 % by Sony I think)
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|Why?? Still beats Motorola.
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