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Sony Ericsson Announces First Walkman Phone
jonknee writes "Sony Ericsson has announced the first in a new line of self-described "Walkman phones" that specialize in playing music. The W800i features a 512MB memory card to store tunes and up to 30 hours of playback (if you keep the phone off, otherwise about half that). We should see a Motorola phone with iTunes onboard within the next two weeks, making March the month of music phones."
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
Nokia announced a similar device last month. It had a slight bump in storage, i think it was 768 flash memory. The problem with the nokia version according to early tech specs is it looks like they sacraficed battery capacity more then the other phone companies (moto and ericsson) in order to be able to play music. The coolest feature of that phone though wasn't the music ability but rather the 360 degree rotatable ability of the screen.
The Nokia phone I think is expected to hit in time for summer, there goal was to have it out by beach time so that people would only have to bring one device with them when they beached it. We'll see how it goes though.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
How many "all on one" devices do consumers really need?
On another note... haven't there been phones like this before? What's their claim to being the first?
http://tinyurl.com/6vq2z/
This idea is already quite old, either that or Sony have handed out these new music playing phones to most of the young teeny boppers in my area already.
A simple trip to the local movie theatre and I am pounded with each and every latest teeny pop song each time a phone rings.
Hopefully these Walkman phones won't allow the tunes to be played through the phone speakers, if that's the case I refuse to leave the house outside school hours.
Does it run Linux ?
All over the net already, terrible reviews. Search for yourself, ye lazy bastage, but it sucks donkeys. Old donkeys. And donkeys are sterile!
I mean, yeah, if it had a frickin' 60GB hard drive inside, but no, it is that darned Mammarystick Duo thing, what's the point of that?
I think it's a good idea. Mobile's keypad is familar to many users, so navigation should be easy. And with the ability to input text and swap songs (memory cards), there might be a market for it.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
from a day or two ago? read today's article on QA :)
Photos and more here
fuvoo: watch something
Phones that play music.
Phones that perform facial recognition.
Phones that take photos.
Phones that shoot small caliber rounds.
Phones that can be tracked by GPS.
Phones that can extend penis lengths.
Phones that can make water from wine.
Phones that introduce you to your new spouse.
Are there any phones that allow you to talk to someone separated by distances greater than you can shout?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Everythign is getting so small now, tiny phones, tiny mp3 players, tiny cameras. It is not that difficult to get each device seperate. I hate this trend towards convergence because you end up with a crappy phone and a crappy mp3 player. I bought one of those phone/pda things and it was terrible. It wasn't half as good as my regular PDA or the phone I traded it in for. So instead i get two crappy devices in the size of one.
Focus on making things better, making phone reception clearer, i don't need to listen to music using my phone, thats what my iPod is for.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
ultimately we'll have to ask ourselves what the heck these things are actually for
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
But how do you fit the cassette in the phone?
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
The calling function will only work with users on the Sony ATRAC phone network.
Now you can be rocking out to "I can't drive 55" while you are driving and chatting on your cel phone.
I wonder what other features they can stuff into a cel phone which could make it a more dangerous device to use while driving? DVD player? Dildo? Oh wait, a waterproof cel on vibrate can double as one.....
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Here's another article about the release:0 050301&PHPSESSID=280a890691a670ebbee1282abba931df
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=1028&date=2
"Music Phones": Because ring tones weren't annoying enough.
First walkman phone eh? You can have music on your regular cell phone RIGHT NOW: Call AT&T's customer support line, say to the operator that you're furious and you wish to complain and talk to her manager, wait till she says "yes Sir, please hold" and enjoy endless music for FREE!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Lessee, it's a Sony digital music format, so it'll be all fucked up. 1. Memory Stick? Give me a break. 2. I'm sure that I can't just put a FAT formatted flash card in it. I'm sure that I have to use some sort of fucking evil-ass Sony piece of crap, PC-only software for the sole purpose of COPYING FILES TO A FLASH CARD.
official site
more info
I've been listening to MP3s on my N-Gage with a 512MB MMC card and stereo headphones for 1.5 years. Granted, I don't have a dedicated start/stop button. On the subject of annoying behavior, yes, I can play songs over the loudspeaker and I can make MP3 files my ringtone should I ever need to annoy you.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
Well as much as some /.'ers hate the convergence of phones and would rather wear a utility belt - this looks like a great mix. I think the older generation instead of lamenting that most convergence phone/camera/music/pda phones dont do it right should applaud the ones that do. This looks like a great first step.
Most importantly the battery life kicks ass on this phone in both modes - I really think that this is the acid test for many - What good are feautures if there is no power to turn on the phone.
One day soon I will own a Phone / PDA / iPod / Camera (Still and Motion) with hopefully some GPS thrown in for good measure - Convergence is key - that or bigger pockets.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
If you keep the phone off you can get 30 hours worth of music playback? Now, it must be a lot better once you actually turn the thing ON...
That's going to make for one heck of an expensive phone.
Population: this article
While the idea of a Walkman phone is cool, I'd rather have a clamshell phone -- if only because, with all the buttons on the inside, it's harder (or impossible) to accidentally answer or hang up the phone while it's in my pocket. So, the one I'm waiting for is the Sony Ericsson Z800. With Bluetooth, Infrared, MP3/AAC support, it has just about all I could ask for.
Still, I'm also waiting to see if/when it'll make Apple's list of iSync-compatible phones -- being able to sync with my Powerbook (as I do now with my Nokia 3650) is pretty handy. That, and I'm hoping that an unlocked version won't cost me an arm and a leg (I'm in the US on T-Mobile, fwiw).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
"if you keep the phone off, otherwise about half that"
uh huh, because it's not like I'd be expecting to receive calls with this phone thing...
triangulate my location with towers as well as track my listening habits.
But my wife's Siemens SL45 is over three years old now. And it wasn't the first mp3 phone either.
The problem with devices converging is the compromises that are made. Instead of two seperate gadgets that do the job well, in this case a mobile phone and an MP3 player, you get one device that is substandard at everything. To me it seems as if the phone is just a gimmick to sell the MP3 player instead of being a functional replacement for a standalone phone.
Does it play Ogg Vorbis? I bet it doesn't, and I can name several standalone DAPs that do support it and probably have better audio quality.
A substandard MP3 player and a phone with poor battery life if you actually want to use both the components of this device? No thanks, I'll stick to my Rio Karma and my trusty old CDMA phone.
I'm mystified by this because my Sony Ericsson V800 already does this. From the pictures, the phone seems to run the same software too. So aside from branding, I fail to see the difference. The V800 also has expandable memory via Memory Stick Pro Duo which cards are available up to 1GB for.
:( But with a little enginuity you could make your headphones work too.
Granted the V800 is not "available" in America, but one can be snagged from eBay and unlocked/flashed. The same thing you're going to have to do with the W800 though.
The drawback to the V800 though is that the earphones connect through the T28 connector as there is no mini-headphone jack.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
You leave the house?
What's it like out there?
"I'm also waiting to see if/when it'll make Apple's list of iSync-compatible phones"
It will do - SE phones all transfer their data the same way via Bluetooth since the T68. Newer ones have SyncML as well, although funnily enough, the V800 I have (a Vodafone UK-only version of the Z800) doesn't have this.
While I'd agree about the benefits of a clamshell phone over a choc bar model, the drawbacks with the V800 are its size - it's bigger than my old T610 and quite bulky, so I'm angling after the new K750 - essentially the Walkman phone without the Walkman bit...
But for a lot of people carrying shit around is a real pain. I have a phone and a PDA and a Network Walkman. The PDA never leaves my bedroom. My Walkman rarely comes with me. My phone is always with me.
Having more PDA and music functionality in my phone (my phone has radio but appears to need some crappy Nokia headset for it) would be a definate advantage to me.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Oh great Bluetooth and MP3 ... so does this meen that your phone can be hacked to yell "HEY! I WATCH GAY PORNO!!!!'" as your ringer???
My year and a half old Kyocera 7135 has a built in MP3 player just like the Ericsson with a Palm Pilot built in to boot. It's a great feature for a phone and I was always surprised no other phones were offering it.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I have a Motorolla E680, It has 50 megs built in, but an SD slot in the bottom (now filled with a 1GB card)
it also comes with real player, so I play my mp3s or mp4/real player format movies in 320x240 resolution.
Not only that is the phone has stereo sound, hand writing recognition on the touch screen, a VGA resolution camera, bluetooth and full GSM world phone capabilities.
The downside is the USB1.1, USB2.0 would have been better.
The greatest part: The phone runs linux with the J2ME over top. Write your own apps in J2ME,
for example, I can SSH from my phone to my network and deal with anything while listening to my mp3s and taking phone calls.
I've been doing this since December, Although I had to order my phone from China, it is fully english and cost me just under 600 dollars.
So why is this new technology anyway?
As phones, PDAs, cameras and media players merge into one thing, we need to come up with a name for it. How about "camputalkman" ??
Or, more likely (in the US at least): "illegal general purpose information piracy device."
You can read a very interesting article on (K750i which is the base of W800) here
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
I thought about getting the NGage maily for playing audio files! It was the lack of flexibility/problems in the phone plan that discouraged me. I hope there's not similar issues with their new product.
Ok I'm probably being stupid but... 30 hours play time with phone off, 15 hours when on. So playing music consumes as much power as simply being a phone. Soo if I don't listen to music ever and just use it as a phone then the battery will last me only 30 hours. Soooo if i don't want to recharge the bloody thing more than once every 24 hours, I may not listen to more than 6 hours of music - and that's based on the promotional figures of a brand spanking new battery.
This IMHO is one of the problems with convergence. If I had two devices then I could listen to music until the battery died but my phone would still work fine. With this device I could so easily end up with a very expensive, high-tech paperwieght come late afternoon.
yeah right, the first... the first Sony Ericsson phone that plays mp3s, has a coloured screen and a camera and is named W800i... really inovative indeed...
the T-Mobile SDA or trusty Siemens SL45 must have been figments of our collective imagination...
they attached a phone on PSP instead
This is the first time I've ever envied a phone that wasn't motorola. I have a Moto v80 (stellar phone) and am positively drooling over pictures of this thing. I don't even care that it probably uses a memory stick... hopefully Moto's iTunes phone won't only be that horrid green thing we've seen posted around.. maybe even get SD card support! That would be so kick-ass.
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
I'll wait for it to be replaced by the Z8000, and then cast into obscurity as everyone goes and uses the less featureful, but simpler 8086.
I find myself on a train alot after peak hours while a baseball or football game is on. I'd love to be able to listen to it on the cell phone... and someday even watch it... I was kind of hoping Tellme would support this, but I don't think they will.
It would be rather surreal to accidently answer the phone. You'd have to time that pretty well.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Press Release: "Not to be outdone, Panasonic, Sony's rival, is coming out with a "BoomBox Phone" -- a giant 200-watt shiny metal of nostalgic beauty complete with a free six-hour cassette recording of best disco hits. The BoomBox Phone is designed to sit comfortably on your shoulder as you make a call with the built-in wireless phone device. There is no better way to chat with your romantic interest with Donna Summer cooing words of love in the background."
Sun and Fun
Don't rely on iSync page. If there is a way to do it (e.g. if you own laptop), test it yourself.
I am telling it since I own a 7650 which is "supported" by iSync. Apple says so. What Apple doesn't tell is, 7650 now (latest fw) uses the 3650 language for syncing data. It took me days finding that hint at osxhints.com. I basically replaced the 7650 resource with 3650, it worked.
If phone uses some sort of standard way syncing the data, it will be supported. Of course thats why it needs real test. E.g. run iSync with Z800 and see if it works.
I look forward to Internet radio and GPS (with "you are here" street maps) plus cell phone in one device. That would be pretty useful.
I think I'll start a cell phone music service.
All you do is call a number, and it puts you on hold. Instant music phone for any cell phone out there.
Is my blackberry to support iTunes. Bluetooth? Check. Email? Check. SSH and telnet? Check. Phone? Check. Sweet color screen? Check. Music? BZZT. How hard can it be?
Yesterdays news, today
They should call it the PSPhone.
It would be rather surreal to accidently answer the phone. You'd have to time that pretty well.
Actually, with my current candybar-shaped phone (Nokia 3650), that's not as hard as you might think ;). It's just a matter of the phone ringing (in my pocket) and then accidentally pressing the "Answer" button against my keys or something in the process of pulling the phone from my pocket.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
There's no way that a computer in the home can replace Battleship, teletext and my tape collection!
I've owned and loved my Treo 600 now for just over a year. I have a 256MB SD card in it, loaded with MP3's, a pair of headphones and PocketTunes loaded. I've been listening to music on my PDA/Phone/Camera for quite awhile now.
I think the Treo can take even larger SD cards, too.
There's no DRM that I'm aware of either.
Greg
Parmasean Cheese. It's what's for dinner.
The "obvious" answer is one. The correct answer is unlimited. There is a point where you cannot keep putting devices together. It would be ridiculous to make an "all in one" device that is a phone, a camera, a walkman, and a printer. You would need a seperate "all in one" device that is a printer/fax/scanner/copier. So there are two "all in one" devices already. You can see where this is going.
off-topic: I need my phone to make phone calls. thats it.
ptpete
err I think you'll find that disks tend not to be as robust as solid-state.
Phones get dropped more than iPods.
If you RTFA, you discover exactly what this is. It's a Sony K750i with a "play" and a "stop" button on it. Oh, and it's a different colour.
Woo. I recently had a MP3 playing smartphone for a few days myself - a Sendo X. Lovely phone, adequate MP3 player (there is an interface annoyance but the sound is fine), only problem is that is has a bug in it that makes it crap at reacquiring the network if you disconnect for any reason.
Pity...
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
"Please! Buy our phone and make memory sticks relevent!"
"Pretty please?"
Looks like another attempt to try and get another non-standard storage format with a patent attached (anyone remember the "minidisc"?) accepted by a generally unimpressed consumer public.
-- Terry
It totally sucks that we are always crying over the memory requirements, when the way it should be done is to have all the songs stored on **YOUR** owned server in DRMed format, and then we have this tiny mobile devices like cell phones, or car radio, your desktop computer at work, etc. to play the songs directly from there. The sole purpose of these devices will be to play music, so they will be simple and small and cheap. There can be a high quality (or even lossless) format of music being streamed to them.
There should be a unified protocol for all this, so each of the client can play the DRMed songs. We already (probably) have the network to support this bandwidth on cell phones..
Just a thought.
Now I don't feel so bad about losing my phone yesterday. Of course, it will be a year before a US phone company offers one of these, and they'll disable all the native music software in place of software with a crap interface that runs splash screens every time it loads and uses airtime for *everything* but... um...
I hate this country.
My Treo 600 with a 1GB SD card holds approx 11 CD's ripped to mp3 at a sample rate of 44k
1GB SD cards are available at a cost of approx $70.
In addition to phone + mp3's the Treo can:
- Runs the palm O/S and applications which run on the Palms
- receives email with attachments (word, excel, powerpoint, pdf, zip)
- browses the web
- syncs with Outlook
- servers as a cellular modem (using PDA net)
- creates word, excel and power point documents
- receives and sends text messages
- Serve as a camera (the Treo 600 resolution is weak)
At the end of the day the Treo is a solid all in one with a very good form factor.
With the new added features, we can cut short the battery life of the phone itself so that it can play more MP3s! Oh, and can I have my MP3s as ringtones? That would be SOOOOOO cool!
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
I just recently purchased the Motorola MPx220 with Cingular... =-Sync? Check. ----It syncs with outlook for inbox, calender, ------contacts, and tasks. =-Phone? Check. ----Duh? Quad-band too! =-MP3 Player & Storage? Check. ----Holds a MiniSD card (which when you buy it - comes w/ a MiniSD to SD adapter. I just purchased a MiniSD at Fry's Electronics, 512mb, $60. Store MP3s, files, etc etc... Plus - it's got a 1.2mp camera, IR, Bluetooth, HTML web browser and a ton more... If you increased battery life to something ridiculous like 30+ hours, then it'd be amazing. Does all the PDA functions I need (calender, contacts & tasks), and it is an amazing phone... http://www.motorola.com/mdirect/hellomoto/experien ce/mpx220/html/features_productivity.shtml
Finally a phone that does what I need it to!
"The Samurai who does not fear death becomes invincible."
Usually I come to slashdot to read technology news before it gets filtered down to the major news outlets. Looks like the plain old newspaper got the scoop this time...
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
$10 to the first phone company that offers me something that is just a phone and nothing else. The phone must be good quality, and include features such as good reception, both analog and digital, long battery life. The only extra features shall include phone book that stores lots of numbers. That's all I really want. I don't want a camera. I don't want it to record video. I don't want voice dial. I don't want a walkman. I want a phone.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I would buy one in a heartbeat if it allowed me to record all my phone conversations.
I don't care if it's illegal (or inadmissable in court, whichever whereever). I don't want anyone to have any room to weasel out of anything.
I really hope this becomes a new standard feature on phones. This is the sort of thing that would make me upgrade.
So what I'm saying is that there is no reason to think that an mp3-phone would perform its duties as a phone, or as a music player, in some less-than-perfect way. Actually, I think this will be the best 512MB mp3 player anywhere because of the Blootooth that I suspect it will have, plus the big color lcd and lots of controls. As a phone, there will be no compromises either. This is a combo that makes sense, especially when you consider the possibility of buying songs from a giant catalogue while you're on a road trip. I don't think it's an accident that Sony-Ericsson support mp3 AND aac, just like the iPod and iTunes. I know they're denying stuff now, but you just wait, this will be huge!
It's about time someone took a simple touch-screen, flat PDA, gave it decent WIFI capabilities and perhaps an alternate cell phone system link (EDGE is it? I stopped watching cellphone network types a while ago.) so it can get online anywhere, shove Skype and an MP3-streamer so you can grab music off your box at home, and hell, make it a PDA too, while you're at it.
Who needs an iPod when all your music is available over the web? Who needs a cellphone when you've got a simple, mobile VOIP solution? Etcetera.
.. is that I can get AM on my walkman. Sheesh, I know that in the US the AM band is a wasteland, but that's not the case in Australia.
Yes, thats right. The first walkman phone. Other than the Sendo X2... and the HTC C550... Keep on smoking that weed, guys.
Actually, all Sony Ericsson phones with a memory stick play MP3 just fine. No DRM on MP3 files, either.
Been playing 800MB of wireless musical joy on this phone since Sep 19th, 2004.
Personally, I am not upgrading my 2 megapixel camera. I like taking photos all the time and I thought about getting a slim digital camera because I hate carrying around my bulky camera, but I would feel ridiculous carrying around the camera and the phone. The key is that I really need to carry it, so I don't want to carry separate devices.
I am more interested in the memory stuff than in the mp3s, but if you have memory in a device that generates sound, it should have some jack to plug-in my headphones and just listen. Come on!
I don't consider it a big deal, this is something that should simply work in such a device.
This may be new (it looks like it isn't) but in any case, you can just see that convergence is around the corner and it does not make sense to spend money in a device like this. . .
So, I won't buy another cellular until it telerports me.
I'm not sure what precisely makes a "walkman phone," but Samsung came out with the MP3-playing Uproar 3 or 4 years ago, as I pointed out on a thread similar to this one a few months back. Does this have a sony brand or something? And they think people actually care about it?
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
"...We should see a Motorola phone with iTunes onboard within the next two weeks, making March the month of music phones."
/. is Ameri-centric?
Well, if you're not in the US. Darn it. Neither is the SE V800. Darn it 2. Who says
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
"Sorry honey, I can't hear you. I have a banana phone in my ear!"
(Try to get that song out of your head - it's impossible. You'll need to be lobotomized first).
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
I can already played mp3, ogg, real media, aac, etc. on my Treo. with a my 512MB SD card.
Gabriel Ricard
Oh boy. Someone finally is hawking what Samsung had 5 years ago in the Uproar, and no manufacturer since has felt needed a replacement in the market. Man, I tell you these cell phone makers are genius.
I've been able to take crappy pictures with every other phone for a half-decade. Why have we had to wait five years for a second phone that plays MP3s without having to schlep around a PDA-sized device?
here it is : NOKIA 3300 : http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,5819,00.html Also, most phones now play MP3s..... The SE one, just has a dedicated button to bring up the playlist... so the user does not have to navigate to the files.... i.e. make it easier for Joe Bloggs to use.... bah humbug big deal..
Back in my day, we didn't need these fancy,
smanchy gadgets on our phone, and I'll
be dammned if I change today! Why, Im still
happy with my old, non feature rich cell
phone! Sure it's the size of a couple
cinderblocks, has a 3 foot antenna, and I have
to walk 10 miles in 3 feet of snow uphill both
ways just to get the auto mechanics to charge
it's lead acid battery, but dammit, I don't want
those stupid games or MP3 players, or cameras and
any of thatb high tech crap on my PHONE!
Now if I can get rid of that musical touch tone
crap on my land line!
the horror! killz me now, plz!!!1
The Wasp T12 Speechtool - "It's well weapon".
http://www.nathanbarley.com/
This is nothing new. My Motorola MPx200 has been playing MP3s for over a year...even comes with stereo headphones and a mic all in one so you can switch between music and calls.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We should see a Motorola phone with iTunes onboard within the next two weeks
There released it already , but it's not cool s the iPod, becausse it has no wheel. I prefer my version of it .
(I'm in the US on T-Mobile, fwiw). ...which is not much...
So can we now send Mp3's to each other like a picto-gram on cingular phones?