Sony Ericsson builds a better Walkman phone

By Stuart Corner
Sunday, 21 May 2006 13:51

Technology

Sony Ericsson has released two new cellphones with improved music functions: the W850, its first GSM/UMTS slider phone  and the W710.
The W850 is claimed to feature a "unique combination" of a full horizontal mode camera and the latest Walkman player 2.0 which will position it against the expected Apple iPhone -a cellphone combined with the iPod music player.

According to Sony Ericsson, the Walkman player 2.0 simplifies navigation through music genres, play lists, individual songs or music albums and includes a TrackID feature powered by Gracenote Mobile MusicID.

This new service enables users to record a few seconds of a song and with one click send that clip to the Gracenote worldwide music database which will identify the track and relay the information back to the phone.

Jan Wäreby, corporate executive vice president, head of sales and marketing, Sony Ericsson, said: "The W850 allows users to identify and buy music in a new and spontaneous way – hearing tracks they like, identifying them with TrackID and downloading them to the phone."

Sony Ericsson also claims to have made the user interface more intuitive making it easy to search and play tracks as well as download them. "New graphics capabilities make the experience more visual and provide music metadata and album art. And the download service is integrated, so there's no need to come out of the music player and into the web browser to visit online music stores."

The W710 supports the same music features but is also "designed to support an active, sporty lifestyle". It includes a motion sensor and new fitness applications that measure running speed, distance and time, or simply count steps when walking.

The fitness application, Walkman player and FM radio can all be controlled from an external display.

It comes with Disc2Phone music management software that enables users to burn CDs and transfer tracks from PC to your phone.