Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson’s much awaited Android based handset, the Rachael has been earlier known as the X3. However, going by latest reports, the phone might be renamed to X10 by the time of its launch in early 2010.

The new information has been garnered by folks over at Tweakers.net, who adds that none other than Sony Ericsson employees who have confirmed this to them. Of course, the identities of these employees have been kept under wraps for obvious reasons. The phone will be officially announced by November. Shipping, however, is expected to start only by January.
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Might also be the first WinMo device to sport an 8.1 megapixel camera

The lone warrior of the Xperia series, the Xperia X1, finally gets a morale booster in the form of its younger,  feature packed cousin, the newly announced Xperia X2.
While we have been hearing the imminent arrival of the Xperia X2 for ages now, it was yesterday on the occasion of Nokia World 09 that Sony Ericsson chose to make the arrival of the phone official. Interestingly, yesterday was also when HTC announced that it will launch its first Windows Mobile 6 based device, the HTC Mega, next month. So, it seems the arrival of Windows Mobile 6.5 is more or less confirmed early next month.

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Sony Ericsson has debuted a new mobile phone named after the ubiquitous Walkman of 1980’s fame. Like other Walkman phones, the W518a features “advanced” shake control technology that allows users to shuffle, skip and control volume levels with a flick of the wrist. In addition, incoming calls can be rejected by simply waving a hand over the camera lens.

The company also introduced the 8.1 megapixel C905a Cyber-shot, which is designed to “look, act and feel” like a digital camera.

Additional C905a features include:

• * 2.4-inch scratch-resistant mineral glass screen.
• * Face detection.
• * Xenon flash with red-eye reduction.
• * Memory Stick Micro (M2) storage compatible up to 16 GB.
• * AT&T Video Share and Music.
• * FM radio, mobile email, Navigator and IM.
• * Direct printing with PictBridge compatible devices.

The Sony C905a Cyber-shot and W518a Walkman will be available online or in AT&T stores beginning July 19. The C905a is expected to retail for $180, while the W518a is slated to sell for $50. However, both price points are contingent upon a mail-in rebate and the signing of a two-year service agreement.
Source:[tgdaily.com]

The latest Walkman phone from the Japanese-Swedish manufacturer is based on style and music. The changeable front side is responsible for creating style, and the package includes an additional one, along with a 1 GB memory card and a stereo headset. The Sony Ericsson W508 clamshell sports a 2.2″, 240 x 320 pixels large internal display and a 1.1″, scratch-resistant, monochrome, 36 x 128 pixels large external screen, a 3.2 megapixel camera with fix focus, 100 MB of internal memory, a gyroscope, HSDPA support, stereo Bluetooth support, a stereo RDS FM radio and a battery providing up to 10 hours of talk time or 24 hours of music playback. Otherwise Sony Ericsson W508 is a typical Walkman phone. According to this it has the music recognizer service TrackID, shake control and the SenseMe feature that selects music tracks according to our mood. The 93.5 x 50 x 14 mm large Sony Ericsson W508, weighing 98 grams, is expected to be launched before June, but it’s price is not known yet.

Source:[mobilearsenal.com]

The Japanese-Swedish manufacturer isn’t in a very good financial state nowadays, they have a huge loss and a large fallback in sales. According to market analysts the main reason for this situation is that the product range is not very well balanced, it misses cheap models that are still attractive. The Sony Ericsson Walkman series focuses on music, and it has been expanded with the W205 slider, being one of the cheapest phones in the family. The handset, featuring only a 1.8″ TFT display with 65 thousand colors and a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels and a 1.3 megapixel camera, has its slider form factor and its advanced musical features make it more attractive than other cheap alternatives. The new Walkman has an advanced music player, an RDS FM radio, TrackID song recognition service, 5 MB of internal memory, an M2 card slot and Bluetooth support. The handset has built-in handsfree, but in order to achieve the proper stereo sound quality the manufacturer reccommends the recently announced 110 x 26 x 40 mm large MS410 passive musical stand, weighing 55.9 grams, which is compatible with all new Walkman phones thanks to its connection interface. The price of the 92 x 47 x 16.4 mm large Sony Ericsson, weighing 96 grams, is not yet known, but it has been revealed that it’s launch date is in Q3.

The latest addition to Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phone line delivers a triple threat of excellent entertainment features, a great camera, and solid sound quality–at a hefty price.

With its Walkman and Cybershot series of models, Sony Ericsson has become a leader in the niche categories of camera and music phones. The latest addition to its North American Walkman line, the Sony Ericsson Walkman W995a ($600, unlocked, as of 6/24/09) delivers the best of both worlds with an 8.1-megapixel camera and high-quality audio features. The price is steep and the hardware has some flaws, but those looking for an all-in-one device (camera, music player, game player, and phone) won’t be disappointed. Just remember that it isn’t a smartphone, as it lacks the connectivity of that kind of device.

The Walkman W995a has a slider body with a bright 2.6-inch, 320-by-240-pixel QVGA display on its front face. Aesthetically, it is attractive, if a bit on the boxy side–it lacks the soft curves and rounded edges we’ve seen on other phones of this class. But given its hefty specs, the W995a is surprisingly compact: It measures 3.8 by 1.9 by 0.6 inches and weighs 4 ounces, and that’s with an 8.1-megapixel camera. Below the screen are a play/pause button surrounded by a circular directional toggle, two soft keys, a ‘clear’ button, a menu-shortcut button, and talk and end-call/power keys.

Sliding the phone up reveals the numeric keypad. Although the keys were large, I found them difficult to press. They also were a bit slick, which made texting a little tedious. The keys are backlit, a convenient touch for messaging and dialing in dimly-lit environments.

The left spine houses a proprietary headset jack/charger connection as well as a shortcut key for the Walkman player. On the right spine sit the music-player controls–especially handy for navigating music via your fingers–a dedicated camera button, and a volume rocker that also works as a zoom while you’re in camera mode. On top are the 3.5-mm headphone jack, speakers, and a kickstand. Speakers can be found at the bottom of the phone as well.

Walkman fans will be pleased to know that the Sony Ericsson W995A’s player doesn’t deviate much from those of older generations, including the NWZ-SF38F Walkman. The interface is basic, but it gets the job done. You can view your collection by artist, albums, individual tracks, playlists, genre, or year. Audiobooks and podcasts get their own folders, as well. The Walkman also organizes your music by Sony’s SensMe playlist generator, which analyzes your songs’ beats-per-minute counts and assigns them moods and tempos such as Happy, Sad, Fast, or Slow. In my hands-on tests, I found SensMe pretty dead-on, though I don’t know if I would ever use it myself.

You can shuffle your music, loop a track, and tweak the equalizer to your liking. You can also choose from five equalizer presets: Normal, Unique, Soul, Easy, and Bass. Overall, sound quality was excellent, and was among the best of the multimedia-rich phones I’ve tested in the past few months. Music piped out of the external speakers was decent, and having dual speakers on the top and bottom of the phone contributed to the fullness of the sound.

Digital imaging is another strength of the Sony Ericsson W995a, although the first thing I noticed about the camera was that it lacked a lens cap. This omission is unfortunate, since the camera is such an integral part of the phone’s appeal, packed as it is with advanced features. Besides the 8.1-megapixel lens, the camera features an LED flash, a 16X digital zoom (as mentioned, you control it with the volume rocker), a self-timer, a macro setting, four white-balance options, brightness controls, spot metering, and an image stabilizer. You can also apply your choice of four color effects, shoot in panoramic mode, take multiple shots, invoke smile detection, and shoot at night with the night mode.

Image quality was very good, with rich colors and sharp detail. Often with camera phones, outdoor shots turn out far better than indoor shots due to a weak flash. Not so with the Sony Ericsson W995a: My indoor shots had accurate colors and very little noise. One feature that didn’t work so well, however, was the image stabilizer, which didn’t keep images from looking fairly blurry when I jostled the camera In my informal tests.

I was pleased with the Sony Ericsson W995a’s video quality as well as its still images. Certain shots had a bit of blur and image noise, but overall I thought the quality was better than that of the iPhone 3GS’s videos (video recording is one of the new features of the 3GS). You can edit your photos and videos with Photo DJ and Video DJ, respectively.

The Sony Ericsson W995a has a simple (albeit slightly gaudy) menu system that is easy to navigate. The browser is NetFront, which should be familiar to Sony Ericsson users, and is as good a browser as you can get without a robust mobile operating system like the iPhone’s, Google’s Android, or Palm’s webOS. The built-in automatic screen rotation helps enhance Web surfing.

As for call quality, I found it somewhat unreliable when I tested this phone over T-Mobile’s 3G network. On some calls, voices sounded clear and natural, but on others, I heard a faint hiss. I also heard an echo on one call. Parties on the other end of the line said that the background noise was distracting when I stood on a busy street corner.

Battery life was below average: In our PC World Test Center trials, the W995a had a talk time of just 4 hours and 9 minutes.

The Sony Ericsson Walkman W995a has multimedia features that surpass some of our top-ranked phones: Both the camera and the music player go above and beyond the capabilities of the current BlackBerry model, the HTC smartphones, and even the iPhone 3GS (the camera, mostly). But the fact that the W995a isn’t a smartphone keeps us from putting it at the top of our charts–it just doesn’t have the browser, keyboard, and e-mail connectivity that the others have. And at a $600 unlocked price point, it can’t compete with the less expensive subsidized phones. Compared with those of the models in our chart of unlocked phones, though, that price will appear less stratospheric.

The Sony Ericsson W508 Grey is a phone which endeavours to provide its user with a veritable choice of features under a stylish design concept. It appeals to a wide variety of people because it caters by way of its advanced features, which provides many opportunities to conduct numerous tasks.

The phone has an internal 2.2 inch TFT display screen which offers a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels with 256,000 colour variations. This is suitably large enough to view images in crisp contrast and with excellent colour reproduction. The secondary screen is the external screen which can be seen on the outside of the casing and is 1.1 inches and monochrome.

The phone comes with a 3.15 mega pixel camera with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. This is good enough quality to take engaging snap shots. The camera also doubles up as a video camera with QVGA quality and 15 frames per second. The phones internal memory is 100 Mb but this can be supplemented by using the memory stick micro facility to increase memory storage up to 16 Gb.

The phones overriding feature is its Walkman MP3 player offering. It’s an effective element of this phone and produces excellent sound quality. MP3, AAC and WMA can all be played by this media player. One method of control of this player is provided by means of Sony’s shake control facility which enables its user to change tracks by simply shaking the phone. Other useful features included are the TrackID music recognition and SenseMe functions. The phone also provides an excellent FM stereo radio for alternative listening pleasure.

The Sony Ericsson W508 Grey offers a HSDPA data connection, which provides viable internet access. Blue tooth and USB are built in providing connectivity for file transfer and file synchronisation. GPRS and EDGE, both of which are class 10 are provided, which completes the connectivity elements of this phone.

The Sony W508 Grey is a phone which provides numerous features that appeal to the general mobile phone user. Its flip phone styling is a popular choice for many as it reduces the chance of damage to the main display screen. Its stylish grey exterior is understated but impressive.