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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!
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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!"
how many?
1.
that's the point of all in one.
that being said, this thing is pretty lame featurewise. phones have had mp3 players for ages.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
But how do you fit the cassette in the phone?
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
How many "all on one" devices do consumers really need?
The answer is obvious: One.
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.
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.
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!
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?
'Single Point of Failure' comes to mind. I.e. it does everything for you and either dies or the battery runs out and your alone in the Wilderness of the Non-Conntected. Like those goofy cartoons from years ago that said things like, "The computers all were down today so we had to think." But more like, you do without the luxuries and have to borrow cell phones or find rapidly vanishing (in the UK anyway) public phones.
Or worse, all your stuff is on the phone and some weasel breaks in and copies it all and leaves you a message like "I'm Sorry Bitch"
Unconnected and lovin' it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It should be, but my PDA thinks it's a music player and my phone thinks it's my calendar and my iPod thinks it should be my contacts list.
And none of them do them well.
I either want a single device which does them all well, or my devices to do one thing and do that well. I would be quite content if my phone didn't try to offer me a bigger penis in between serving up music...
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
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
Combining the functionality of a phone, camera, pda, and Walkman into one is certainly doable technically (many of the components are common - battery, screen, processor, radio transciever). The hard part will be keeping it comprehensible, and making each part work well. My Sony Clie has all but the phone, and I can tell you the software needs a lot of work.
I sure hope they don't stop reinventing this "convergence device" wheel until they get it right.
Now I assume you're at home or at work. Take a look around. Unless you're very rich and have a very sophisticated taste chances are that you have one or two things in your view that are what you'd call excellent. Could be your computer, your display, the hifi-280.1-80MW-Armageddon-stereo or perhaps the $800 armchair you're sitting on. But most things probably fit in the "good enough" category. You're desk is probably nothing special, but it's good enough. The $20 speakers? Good enough. The Ikea lamp? Good enough.
People always wonder why Apple is at 5% market share. And while there's a myriad of reasons and I don't want to oversimplify it, imho the most important reason is that Steve Jobs is one of those quality freaks I mentioned above who have the money, the time, the inner drive and a good enough (no pun intended =) taste to strive for excellence in everything they own and everything they do. Most of us don't.
Well seems like I got a bit off topic here. But to make the connection: Sony, Nokia, etc. realized that the iPod is an excellent player and it has a strong entry barrier (its market share and the ITMS) for other players that makes it hard for competitors even if they were superior and even more so if they're just good enough. So they do the next best thing. They take other devices where they have the network effects on their side (phones as in the article, handhelds, see the PSP or PDAs) and add a music player that is good enough. If it's really good enough many people won't bother to cough up another $300 with the exception of about 5%.
jm2 =)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage