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Check it out immediately! We’re all in love with this new baby! 
CLICK ME. NOW. SERIOUSLY. DO IT!
Filed under: New phone
(6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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Along with the launching of Entertainment Unlimited, Sony Ericsson showcased an upcoming mobile phone by the concept ‘Idou’, which is going to give us a glimpse of what lies ahead for us, and what Sony Ericsson is currently working on. The ‘Idou’ is one of a number of projects that will be launched this year under the umbrella of Entertainment Unlimited.
The ‘Idou’ is a cameraphone with special focus on media. It will feature a 12.1-megapixel camera with auto focus and an array of advanced camera touch features and a xenon flash. I’m guessing the sensor in this phone will the Sony’s new 1/2.5-inch 12.25 megapixel sensor for mobile phones. That would be awesome! The Media menu will now be fully optimized for the 3.5-inch 16:9 widescreen touch screen, and will enable you to tap directly into your favourite movies, TV-series, video clips and tracks.
The phone will be based on what will become the Symbian Foundation operating system, which means that thousands of applications will be available online. PlayNow will be pre-installed, and will allow you to personalize the phone.
- “Entertainment Unlimited is at the core of Sony Ericsson’s philosophy, building on the strength of our great entertainment assets such as Walkman and Cyber-shot phones and our unique service and applications integration. Many of the strategic initiatives we’ve announced in the past year have laid the internal framework to launch this new consumer proposition to the market and Sony Ericsson is now ready to drive the next wave of market development with Entertainment Unlimited”, said Hideki Komiyama, President at Sony Ericsson, in a press release.
The ‘Idou’ will be available during the second half of 2009 - naturally marketed by a different product name.
Filed under: Announcement, C series, Camera, Cyber-shot, Entertainment Unlimited, New phone, News, Prototype, Symbian, Symbian Foundation, Upcoming (10 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5) Loading ...
Many of you probably know the phone by its codename - namely Hikaru. The W995 is a perfect example of how Sony Ericsson is aiming to combine Cyber-shot and Walkman features in its high-end handsets. It is also Sony Ericsson’s first phone to be under the umbrella of the newly-announced ‘Entertainment Unlimited’ - more about this right over here. So what’s this all about, you ask? Well, for starters, unlike any other Walkman phone, this slider phone features an auto focus and photo flash-equipped 8 megapixel camera with up to 16x digital zoom. The camera software enables the use of an image and video stabiliser, face detection, picture and video blogging. Yep, that’s face detection on a Walkman - neat, huh?
Speaking of Walkman, the W995 features the Walkman music player - most likely version numero quatro, totally new and totally awesome! Just like the preceding version, it is able to display album art, has an equalizer, which can be adjusted manually or according to several presets, the award-winning Clear Stereo and Clear Bass audio enhancement technologies, Shake Control to switch songs and control the volume, and SensMe, which allows you to pick tracks according to their “mood coordinates”. On the hardware side the phone features Bluetooth with A2DP, which can be used for audio streaming, a pair of powerful stereo speakers and - read carefully - a 3.5 mm audio jack - a first for the Walkman series and feature phones (not counting the J132, which can be dubbed a cheapo phone and not a feature phone). The W995 also has the familiar and totally brilliant TrackID music recognition service, which can provide the user with the title, album and artist of a song in exchange for a small recorded clip of the respective song.
- “The W995 Walkman phone brings together the very best music experiences of any phone, augments this with best in class video and sharing capabilities to offer the most complete communication entertainment package to date,” said Alexandre Cardon, Global Marketing Business Manager at Sony Ericsson in a press release.
- “This powerful mobile phone delivers the best possible video resolution that can fit in your pocket and with enough battery stamina to watch two full length feature films. The W995 also comes complete with the award winning clear audio experience and an 8.1 megapixel camera for the highest quality picture and sound available in a mobile phone.”
There’s also a built-in YouTube player in the Media menu for streaming videos off the popular video sharing site. Just set the phone on its built-in stand and watch the videos in full screen and with sound from the stereo speakers on the back.
An accelerometer is also included in the phone, which enables menu and browser rotation, in addition to motion gaming and the use of the WalkMate application.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the W995 also features Wi-Fi connectivity with DLNA for tapping into home or public networks and making use of the (most of the time) freely available bandwidth. The handset is also equipped with a-GPS unit for location services (Wayfinder and Google Maps included on the phone) and photo geo-tagging - a feature that tags every photo with the global coordinates of the place where it was taken. And then there’s also the obligatory FM receiver with RDS. Unfortunately, there is no FM transmitter this time. Other features include chat view messaging, a very nice Facebook application and a Flickr application. The W995 also comes with a rather cool application that can change the sound of your voice.
The handset will come with an 8 gigabyte Memory Stick Micro M2 card in-box and a pair of HPM-77 headphones. These will be replaced by the noise-cancelling HPM-88 headphones in selected regions.
There’ll also be a new media syncing software coming with the phone in place of the Media Manager software - this is called MediaGo. According to the press release, the program “lets you effortlessly and automatically transfer any audio, photos and videos between your phone and computer. You can even find podcasts with exciting content easily from the directory”. That is basically what the Media Manager software used to do, but there’s more to it. MediaGo will automatically synchronize your media with your computer to keep the phone updated. Also, it’ll automatically convert video files to give you the best quality playback on the phone:
- “With Media Go there’s no need to worry about format, resolution and ‘frame per second’ anymore.” said Alexandre Cardon.
- “No longer will the video you transferred from your PC to your phone play in low resolution or bad quality. With Media Go and the W995 the experience is as good on your phone as it was on your PC,” he continued.
What’s more about the W995 is that it features a bright and clear scratch-resistant 2.6-inch TFT display, capable of showing up to 262,144 colours and the resolution being QVGA - QVGA means 240 x 320 pixels, which is quite reasonable for a display of its size. The phone itself measures 97 x 49 x 15 millimetres and weighs a good 113 grams - a fair size and weight for a phone with features of its kind.
The W995 supports quad-band GSM networks (GSM/GPRS/EDGE) as well as dual-band UMTS/HSPA networks (tri-band in the W995a variant for the US). The battery is good for up to 370 / 360 hours of standby (2G / 3G networks) and up to 9 / 4 hours of talk (2G / 3G networks) on a charge. You could also decided to go music crazy, and listen to music for a full twenty hours in a row or watch videos in up to five hours per charge, if that’s what yo prefer.
The phone will ship during Q2 this year in the colours Cosmic Silver, Energetic Red, and Progressive Black.
Personally, I think that this is a fantastic addition to Sony Ericsson’s portfolio. An 8 megapixel camera, Clear Audio experience, a 2.6-inch screen and Wi-Fi in one package makes this phone truly awesome. Here’s to hoping it won’t be overpriced.
Filed under: Announcement, Entertainment Unlimited, New phone, News, W series, Walkman (10 votes, average: 4.90 out of 5) Loading ...
Also announced today is the C901, which is a bit of a surprise to me. It’s not a global announcement like the other products, which is why I didn’t expect it would be announced today. The C901 will be available in selected markets only.
In terms of features, the C901 is very much like the C903. All the same camera features, including a 5-megapixel camera, auto focus, Smile shutter, BestPic, Smart Contrast, Face detection, PhotoFix, geo-tagging, etc. On top of that, it adds a xenon flash instead of a photoflash LED.
Other features include chat view messaging, YouTube, Fm-radio with RDS, built-in accelerometer, Bluetooth, 3D gaming, video calling, Google Maps, etc.
The battery is good for up to 9½ hours of talk or 430 hours of standby time.
The phone measures 105 x 45 x 13 millimetres and weighs 107 grams. It’s a quad-band GSM / dual-band HSPA phone.
It’ll be available during Q2 in three variants; Noble Black, Sincere Silver and Precious Peach.
You can find much more about the C901 right here!
More pictures of the C901 after the break!
Continue reading “Sony Ericsson announces the C901 for selected markets”
Filed under: C series, Camera, Cyber-shot, New phone
(16 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...
In a rather surprising move, Sony Ericsson announced today the low-end W395 Walkman phone. As you can see, it has a slider form factor with a rather glossy housing and is equipped with a 2.0″ 176×220 scratch-resistant screen, supporting up to 262k colours. The Walkman boasts a 2-megapixel non-AF snapper on its back, which is adequate for an “affordable” phone. Did I mention Photo fix? Now that’s a first for a phone of its class, I believe.
The music side of the phone features the familiar Walkman 2.0 player with a customizable equalizer, the MegaBass equalizer preset, album art and stereo widening (and stereo speakers to boot!). It also has Sony Ericsson’s well-known TrackID music recognition service, which lets you identify the title, album and artist of a song just by recording a small clip of it.
- Sony Ericsson takes pride in understanding the youth market, and the W395 is a mobile phone that caters to all their needs with great music quality, says Alexandre Cardon, who’s the Global product marketing manager for music at Sony Ericsson in a press release.
- Our most affordable Walkman slider phone to date allows users to share music with friends as well as video clips and photos for the ultimate entertainment experience, he continues.
There’s FM radio with RDS and Bluetooth with A2DP on-board as well. The most interesting feature is perhaps the built-in stereo speakers “with high quality bass” - I don’t know about you guys, but that kind of surprised me. The W395 ships bundled with the HPM-64 stereo headset and with a 1GB M2 memory card.
Another interesting thing about this phone is that it also features and accelerometer, which means that you can play motion-controlled games on it, much like the gaming F305, the former being basically a Walkman version of the latter.
It measures 96 x 47 x 14.9 millimetres and weighs 96 grams - that’s almost exactly the same as the F305. Its battery is good for 8 hours of talk or up to 480 hours of standby life - that’s actually quite impressive! Music listening time is set to only 12½ hours though, which is hardly ground-breaking.
So, the W395 will be available in “selected markets” in 2 colours - Dusky Grey and Blush Titanium from the first quarter of the year.
If, you ask me, this addition to SE’s portfolio seems a bit redundant, but I guess that design does look rather well and that it’ll be mostly popular among the youngsters.
We’ve got live pictures of the W395 in cooperation with SE-community after the break! 
Continue reading “Sony Ericsson pushes out W395 Walkman slider”
Filed under: New phone, W series, Walkman (7 votes, average: 4.14 out of 5) Loading ...