[MW Forums]

Sony Ericsson Mobile will launch late Thursday six new phones, including a high-end Walkman-branded handset with around 9GB of internal Flash memory. more

[Tau_Myx]

Sony was the Apple of the '90s.

[JMStafford]

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Our new Walkman mobile phone isnt designed as a response to the iPhone but as a further development of the Walkman, the Sony Ericsson spokeswoman said.

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Translation: We know it sucks, but we've gotta try.

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The blogosphere was full of rumors of a new PSP mobile phone after Japanese employees of Sony Ericsson last month filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a mobile phone with video game features.
The patent is registered; we register many patents, the spokeswoman said. But we dont have a PSP mobile phone in the planning. I cant say that we wont see such a device in 10 years but there are no plans to build one at the present time.

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Sony needs a new spokeswoman.

[veggiedude]

I think you meant to say the Sony Walkman was the Apple iPod of the 90's.
Actually, it would be the 80's.

[Schneb]

I agree, during the 80s, the Walkman Sports edition was the ONLY portable cassette player that would take any amount of abuse or weather. It definitely was the iPod of its day! Such was Sony's heyday.

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
Of course it isn't an "iPhone killer." Sony will give this new model just enough more internal flash memory to out due the iPhone and have a...

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large-touch display for easy navigating.

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Of course...

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But, unlike Apples planned iPhone, the new Walkman will include a keyboard.

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...This wouldn't be trying to 'one up" Apple.

[Toe_MW]

When?
iPhone'll be here in two weeks. I can't even figure out what on S-E's website is supposed to be in any way comparable to the iPhone. If they're thinking it's an iPod with a phone in it, they have been sorely, horribly mislead.

[Dan Frakes]

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Our new Walkman mobile phone isnt designed as a response to the iPhone but as a further development of the Walkman, the Sony Ericsson spokeswoman said.

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Translation: We know it sucks, but we've gotta try.

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To be fair, Sony-Ericsson's Walkman phones have actually been quite good -- easily the best music-playing phones on the market -- and the 900 series have been pretty good, if underpromoted (in the U.S.), smartphones.

[brera]

The other issue these announcements highlight is the 'Emperor's New Clothes' quality of the iPhone, which, at heart, is a quad-band EDGE device with a 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera. To put this in perspective, the new Sony Ericsson K850i features quad-band EDGE plus triple-band HSDPA, a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera complete with Xenon flash, an RDS FM radio, and removable memory (8GB M2 cards are due sometime this year). It also has nearly double the talktime on GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks and will be much cheaper than the iPhone.
I fully appreciate the unique qualities of the iPhone's interface, but the fact is that you can enjoy comparable browsing/messaging/multimedia functionality on Windows Mobile, S60 and UIQ devices, which makes you wonder what will happen to sales once the initial hype has died down and a potential customer is weighing up an iPhone against something like the Nokia N95, especially as the Nokia will probably cost only half as much...