Sony Ericsson shows shake-to-shuffle Walkman phone
Symbian smart model too
Sony Ericsson's been busy, busy, busy this week: in addition to announcing an upgraded Cyber-shot camera phone, it debuted a pair of new Walkman music phones - once controlled simply by shaking, rattling or rolling it.
Sony Ericsson's W910: shake it up
The W910 has the flick-of-the-wrist control. Select its Shake option, and you can skip and shuffle around your music collection by doing just that: giving it a shake. The novel mechanism also works with games.
A slider phone kitted out in fiery "hearty red" hues, the W910 has a two-megapixel camera on the back, a 240 x 320, 262,144-colour screen on the front and a 1GB Memory Stick Micro for song storage - in addition to the 40MB of built-in memory. It has quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge and 3G HSPDA connectivity, along with Bluetooth to link it to headsets and stereo headphones.
Sony Ericsson said it would also offer a 2.5G-only variant, the W908.
The W960 has Bluetooth stereo - aka A2DP - too, and like the W910 features TrackID which Sony Ericsson claimed can identify a song that's playing around you - on the radio, on the pub jukebox - and text back the title.
Sony Ericsson's W960: Symbian runner
What really makes the W960 stand out is its foundation on the Symbian operating system - it's smart phone as music phone - complete with 240 x 320, 262,144-colour touch screen, stylus and jog dial as per Sony Ericsson's P-series smart phones.
Likewise, it has Wi-Fi on board and the Opera web browser pre-loaded. For cellular connectivity, it has tri-band GSM/GPRS and 3G radios.
It's a more traditionally styled, black model, and comes bundled with a Bluetooth stereo headset. There's a 3.2-megapixel camera on board and 8GB of memory. Like the W910 it has an RDS-capable FM radio.
All three handsets are due to arrive in the shops in Q4.
More W910 and W960 pics on the next page
Related review
Sony Ericsson Walkman W880i slim phoneNext page: W910
COMMENTS
Nope
The shake to control seems like a solution in search of a problem to me. Whilst I applaud the engineering design that went in to it I suspect that it is a 'cool' feature that wont be seen elsewhere
Re: Jogging
Jeremiah, I think you missed the text "Select its Shake option...".
It obviously optional functionality that you can turn on/off depending on when you are running or not. Besides, I would imagine they had thought of that too so it probably takes a more vigorous shake to shuffle than a little trip.
Jogging?
Go for a jog, it changes tracks with each step.
Trip while walking around the office, shuffle your carefully crafted playlist.
Thank you, but I already have enough trouble with my laptop (you know, the kind you turn upside down and shake to reboot).
Worthy successors, until...
The 960 looks like a worthy successor to my 950 - a great phone, and introducing WLAN, camera and upgraded memory is great. Then they'll give to Orange who'll slap their own software on it and ruin the damn thing...
