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Sony Ericsson Announces First Walkman Phone 204

Posted by samzenpus from the all-in-one dept.
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."
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Sony Ericsson Announces First Walkman Phone More

Sony Ericsson Announces First Walkman Phone

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  • Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Electroly ( 708000 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @07:58PM (#11829307)
    No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

    • Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Stuart Gibson ( 544632 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:07PM (#11829409) Homepage
      We really need a "+1: Knowledge of the lore of /." modifier.

      Stuart

    • Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fanblade ( 863089 )
      We're all holding out for the iPhone anyway.

    • Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The reason it's lame -- Sony proprietary Memory Stick.

      Also, limited to T-Mobile (US customers) service.

      Also, no price announced yet.

      Also, DRM music only.

      • Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jasen666 ( 88727 )
        memory stick... don't care about too much

        tmobile... great, that's my co. :)

        DRM... where does it say that at? I read Ericsson's site and saw no mention of DRM.

      • Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by doctor_no ( 214917 ) on Thursday March 03, 2005 @04:25AM (#11832045)
        Problem is sir, the SD is also proprietary. SD is controlled by Matsushita, Toshiba, and Sandisk. MMC isn't proprietary, but by default pretty much all new MMC slots pretty much needs SD compatibility since consumers don't know the diffrence and expect SDs to work.

        Why would Sony dump one proprietary standard just to adopt another which they have to pay licencing fees for? Quite honestly, the Sony-bashing regarding memorysticks is garbage. It would be a valid argument if the alternative was an open standard, however most people seem to endorse SDs. Out of all the pletohra of the small flash multimedia standards that constantly pop up I'm not sure why people only attack Sony.

        As far as DRM goes, all other players also have DRM. plus it supports MP3s, so there's a way around it. Also, the phone is GSM/GPRS triband so it will likely work with other GSM services in the future.

    • Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by recharged95 ( 782975 )
      "Features of the Sony Ericsson W800i include everything of the K750i"

      OK, no WiFi, but it's got bluetooth. That would classify it as having Wireless. Anyway, when you're transferring 512MB, the USB2.0 cable is the way to go [quickly].

      Wonder what different features being a 'Walkman' brings to the table. My 750i has high quality headphones, AM/FM stereo and MP3 player (and vga video camera). Only advantage I see is a *bling* walkman brand name sticker, 2.0MP camera and [really] the 512MB stick. You can onl

    • No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

      You mean I gotta plug this in to one of them old telephone jacks?!?!

  • Everyone is getting in the game (Score:5, Informative)

    by moofdaddy ( 570503 ) * on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @07:58PM (#11829309) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Everyone is getting in the game (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The coolest feature of that phone though wasn't the music ability but rather the 360 degree rotatable ability of the screen.

      Now, *that's* a feature I want in my cell phone-- A 360-degree rotating screen, to go along with my camera phone and useless blinking lights.

      All the while, I still have trouble finding decent cell service for less then $29.99 a month.

      I thought competition was supposed to drive down prices, not increase stupid gadgetry for the glitteratti ...
    • Are you talking about the 6682? Because that phone has a 900 mAh battery in it.
    • 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.

  • All in one? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zoloto ( 586738 )
    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/ [tinyurl.com]

    • Re:All in one? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:01PM (#11829341) Homepage Journal
      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.
    • to clarify, i misread that as being a first for them. my mistake

    • Re:All in one? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:02PM (#11829353)
      How many "all on one" devices do consumers really need?

      The answer is obvious: One.

      • Re:All in one? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jacksonj04 ( 800021 ) <nick@nickjackson.me> on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:37PM (#11829646) Homepage
        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...
        • In the defense of the iPod, that's more of a "Hey, this wouldn't take much code to add!" feature.

          I know some people who think it works well enough for them, and it doesn't otherwise detract from the functionality of the iPod, so I think it's forgiveable.

          Not trying to evangalize the iPod (it stands pretty well on its own), just trying to counter that point.
        • My iPod thinks it's a music player, calendar, contacts list, boot CD, and backup CD!

          Why isn't yours?
          • How did you get it to be a bootable disk? I've been trying that for ages and acheived nothing but needing to restore it to factory settings.

            Why no calendar? Because Outlook doesn't like talking standard formats.

            But aside from that, your point still stands. I just want it to play my music though!
            • Oh, hrm, I've never tried it on Windows.

              On Mac all you do is plug it in, insert the OS X CDs, and when you install OS X you tell it to install on the iPod, without formatting your iPod.

              If you can do that with Windows (without formatting your iPod) and you have a 'boot from external disk' option in the BIOS, I don't know what would stop you. Except possibly the master boot record... I think Linux or BSD might be more lenient than Windows about that though.
              • I can get it to boot from the iPod, but whenever I give the iPod a boot sector it then can't read the settings/music and hence needs restoring to factory before it plays music again.
                • That's because the iPod is it's own computer:
                  RAM, hard disk, firmware, display, power, serial, and two CPUs.

                  If you mess with it's boot sector, how will it be able to boot?

                  That's why I mentioned the MBR; don't touch it, and don't add a boot sector. On OS X, the boot sector happens to be in firmware, and I think you can similarly configure Linux or BSD, though I haven't tried it. (OpenBIOS and LinuxBIOS come to mind)

        • Re:All in one? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by nutshell42 ( 557890 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @10:32PM (#11830472) Journal
          The thing is not everyone needs the best of everything. Many people need/want a device really good at one thing (be that taking notes, playing music or ringing during a movie) and are happy if it's "good enough" at many other things.

          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 =)

      • WRONG (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        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
    • Think of it this way...

      A VAIO (or similar) with built in camera, running Skype over WiFi (etc, etc) would be an all-in-one. Would you be happy with just the one? Of course not!

      Therefore, the number of all-in-one devices is "as many as they can persuade you to buy" - Camera with extras, Phone with extras, MP3 player with extras, PDA with extras...

    • Re:All in one? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:30PM (#11829599) Homepage Journal
      How many "all on one" devices do consumers really need?

      '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.

    • Re:All in one? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:43PM (#11829686)
      On another note... haven't there been phones like this before? What's their claim to being the first?
      Does being first really matter? The iPod wasn't the first of its kind, and look how profitable it is.

      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.

    • Re:All in one? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mike Kelly ( 864224 )
      Any device that runs (most of) the Palm OS versions can play music. This includes smartphones.

      I've got an old Kycera 7135 that works well. Just drop in a 512GB SD card that you've copied MP3s to via a card reader and you're in business. Lately I've been using it to listen to podcasts pulled down by iPodder.

    • Re:All in one? (Score:2, Informative)

      by notthe9 ( 800486 )
      When I followed the tinyurl link, I was expecting goatse or something, not something THAT bad, man.
    • "Walkman" is a trademark of Sony Corporation. Thus there's been dozens of phones capable of playing music in different formats, including mp3, but none of them where able to, for purely legal reasons, refer to themselves as a "walkman".

      Cheap marketing. It's sorta like those shamppos claiming to be the only one containing "HydroCare", and then when you read the label more carefully it says "HydroCare" is a tm of the corporation making exactly that shampoo. Thus the competitors *can* contain chemically exac

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • from a day or two ago? read today's article on QA :)

  • Cell phone meets the Walkman: virtual karma (Score:4, Informative)

    by Virtual Karma ( 862416 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:01PM (#11829336) Homepage
    Photos and more here [blogspot.com]

  • More Phone Stuff! (Score:5, Funny)

    by geomon ( 78680 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:01PM (#11829337) Homepage Journal
    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?

  • I like my seperate devices (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moofdaddy ( 570503 ) * on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:01PM (#11829338) Homepage
    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.
    • 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.
    • Look, I agree that some convergence devices just don't make sense. I don't think camera-phones are such a great idea, but, whatever. Phones that play mp3s are a different story. First of all, you don't need any new interface controls. The phone already has a screen and a joystick. Second, the phone already needs some amount of flash memory. This is getting cheaper and smaller all the time. If 512MB does not impress you, remember that this will grow soon. That little memory stick adds very little to the size
    • And if all those gadgets had some sort of standard power adaptor, I wouldn't be drowning in transfo's..

    • Focus on making things better, making phone reception clearer

      Everytime Slashdot runs a story about a new cell phone, comments like this come up. I'm not going to argue about whether a phone should be a PDA/music player/whatever (I don't mind those extra features but YMMV), but when it comes to reception, the phones are already there.

      I live in a sparsely populated Scandinavian country, and haven't had any coverage issues in years. If you can't get decent reception, complain to your operator. It's not the pho

    • Oh, do be quiet, you have no idea what you are talking about.

      Three years ago, I bought a smartphone that could also play mp3s. It takes SD-cards AND FOR THAT REASON ALONE it is still better than all of the flash based players out there. That's right, it's better at playing mp3s than most mp3 players. The only thing that gives some the edge is the large hard-drive storage.

      My new phone? It has WiFi, a large full colour screen, SD-cards again. Does a better job of playing mp3s than ANY of the players out t

  • Sorry I Missed Your Call (Score:3, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:01PM (#11829340) Homepage Journal
    Sorry I missed your call, I was totally jamming to Louis Jordan and couldn't be bothered.

    ultimately we'll have to ask ourselves what the heck these things are actually for

    • No, see, the whole point is that unless you had your phone on vibrate you would miss their call if you were listening to an ipod. I assume this will do something like turn down the music volume when the phone actually rings, and that the caller will be heard in the headphones. This is one convergence device that makes sense.

  • Walkman? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hershmire ( 41460 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:01PM (#11829342) Homepage
    But how do you fit the cassette in the phone?
  • 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.....

  • Other article (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here's another article about the release:
    http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=1028&date=20 050301&PHPSESSID=280a890691a670ebbee1282abba931df [thelocal.se]
  • "Music Phones": Because ring tones weren't annoying enough.

  • Nothing new (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:03PM (#11829362)
    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!

  • Looks like Sony will fuck it up. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gregvr ( 518483 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:03PM (#11829364)
    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.

  • Congratulations Sony... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Humorously_Inept ( 777630 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:06PM (#11829386) Homepage
    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.
    • Same here with a Treo 600. Although the CPU power is less than current palm devices (so the upper limit is ~200kbps Ogg), it works well with a 256mB SD card and AeroPlayer. To Sony: Whoopee Fucking Doo.
    • Same here, with the SPV phone I bought THREE years ago. Go Sony, leading-edge stuff here! Does the loudspeaker thing (very handy!) as well and all the other things this new "wonder" device does.

  • Convergence Convergence Convergence! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ihatewinXP ( 638000 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:06PM (#11829394)
    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 Sony Ericsson Z800 is the one I'm waiting for (Score:3, Interesting)

    by abischof ( 255 ) * <alex&spamcop,net> on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:12PM (#11829448) Homepage

    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 [engadget.com]. 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 [apple.com] -- 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).

  • Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)

    by paithuk ( 766069 )
    "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...

  • V800 does this already.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MrPerfekt ( 414248 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:18PM (#11829491) Homepage Journal
    I'm mystified by this because my Sony Ericsson V800 [gsmarena.com] 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.

    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. :( But with a little enginuity you could make your headphones work too.
    • W800 is based on K750i and not V800. (The naming does confuse the issues though.)

      W800 and k750i are both GSM and "candy bar" style phones. They are also quite a bit smaller than the V/Z800.

      K750 and W800 also have an external slot for the memory card, so you don't have to open up the battery compartment in order to get to the memory slot.

      The biggest difference as far as MP3s go between W800 and V800 is that the W800 can be put into MP3 mode and then switch off the radio for the mobile network, thus gettin

  • How is this new? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:25PM (#11829557) Homepage
    My year and a half old Kyocera 7135 [kyocera-wireless.com] 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

  • Motorolla (Score:3, Informative)

    by Indes ( 323481 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:28PM (#11829576) Homepage
    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."
  • 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 [engadget.com] around.. maybe even get SD card support! That would be so kick-ass.

  • Panasonic Presents: "BooomBox Phone" (Score:3, Funny)

    by Sundroid ( 777083 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @08:41PM (#11829679) Homepage
    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."
  • 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?
  • 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

  • Not even that new compared to Sony's existing line (Score:3, Interesting)

    by biglig2 ( 89374 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @09:05PM (#11829898) Homepage Journal
    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...
  • "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
  • 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.
  • $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.
    • I think that there are plenty of these type of phones out there. The problem is that you're not going to see many news articles about phones that are just phones. Nokia isn't going to send out press releases that generate stories on Yahoo news for the latest "phone-only" cell phone.

      One suggestion for you would be to approach the wireless companies with the story that you need a business phone. They won't try to sell you all of this extra junk - they'll only give you what you say you need.

      Good luck.
    • Thanks for the suggestions. I realize these phones exist, but what I want is a phone service provider to start pushing them. I want a phone company that doesn't make me subsidise everyone else's phones. Make a service where everyone pays for their phones, and keep the monthly bills low. Don't waste network bandwidth on videos, pictures, and other useless stuff, and you can make those monthly costs even lower.
  • 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.
  • Been playing 800MB of wireless musical joy on this phone since Sep 19th, 2004.

  • 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?
  • "Sorry honey, I can't hear you. I have a banana phone [transbuddha.com] in my ear!"
    (Try to get that song out of your head - it's impossible. You'll need to be lobotomized first).
  • I can already played mp3, ogg, real media, aac, etc. on my Treo. with a my 512MB SD card.

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