Sony Ericsson launches 3 new Walkman devices, slashes 2000 jobs and clones our Music Store




Three years ago Sony decided to put their Walkman brand on their Sony Ericsson products. Today they've announced the W302, W595 and W902. The W302 has a 2 megapixel camera, W595 has a 3,2 megapixel camera, W902 has a 5 megapixel camera and also comes with an 8 GB memory card in box.

There is no KSP for the W302 as far as I can tell, except for the fact that it is 10,5 mm thin, don't worry, we have the 5310 to combat that and it's doing fan-freaking-tastic.

The W595 has the unique feature of allowing 2 pairs of headphones to be plugged in at the same time. Interesting use case, recently coming out of college, no need to share ear buds, instead 2 people can each have their own headphones on and listen to the music coming out of the same device.

The W902 is just a 5 megapixel Walkman.

All three devices have TrackID, a brilliant feature that lets you put your mobile phone up to a speaker playing a song and by using some audio recognition algorithms on a server somewhere in the cloud it identifies the artist and title of the tune playing and offers you the choice to purchase that single.

Prices have not been announced, all 3 devices come out in Q4 2008, all 3 devices have quadband GSM/EDGE, the W902 and W595 have HSDPA on the 2100 MHz band.

Our competitor RIM is having the same problem we are, keeping products from leaking.

The BlackBerry Kickstart 8220/8210 is their first clam shell product. It still has a trackball just like every other BlackBerry and a QWERTY keyboard with two letters per key.

It also comes with WiFi, a QVGA (240x320) screen, the 8220 will have WiFi while the 8210 substitutes that for GPS, 3,5 mm headphone jack (pay attention Eseries team, that is the one complaint people seem to have about the E71), 2 megapixel camera and quadband GSM/EDGE; no 3G.

Motorola's new concept device is a credit card reader, scanner, RFID reader, touchscreen phone




This is likely just Photoshop work at this point. But it does show us a potential new form factor and a MOTO way of thinking. Let's take a look at the "Sparrow."

Motorola is looking at getting the handset into the retail value chain with this. There's big money in payment. So here's a handset that can get involved in financial transactions at the point-of-sale. Help consumers make purchasing decisions. And help them get out of the store. The idea is that this watch-like, touch-screen device can read credit cards, scan barcodes, read RFID tags, and make secure cellular connections.

Will this be it? The S60 hit of the holiday season? More on Samsung's InnoV8 (innovate). This 8MP, 16GB device will be a tough Nseries rival.

Samsung INNOV8 also known as the i8510 is the company’s latest smartphone sporting Symbian S60 OS. The Innov8 takes the form of a slider handset having a 2.8-inch QVGA LCD capable of displaying 16 million colors.

We first got the heads up on this Samsung 8 megapixel, 16GB S60 phone more than two weeks back. But now more details and some reviews are flowing in on this feature-rich smartphone, and this is worth highlighting again. And then probably again. So, here's what we have:

Analyst Ben Wood of CCS is calling this the first non-Nokia S60 device that is really competitive. Brighthand is saying this will push multimedia smartphones to a new level. It's "the forefront of mobile technology" says GSM Arena. Lots of good catchy phrases. Get ready! This could be a big seller and catch the eye of many looking at the N96 this autumn.

This isn't just about a gimmicky 8 megapixels. Other imaging features include geotagging, panoramic shooting, image stabilization, face detection, smile detection, and blink detection. It has an accelerometer, A-GPS, optical mouse, FM radio, microSD slot, 3.5G, and WiFi. And it all appears to work rather well together.

CCS estimates the price will be about 50 Euros above that of the Nokia N95 8GB. Things will be very competitive when this hits the European shelves this September.