The W508 has a flip phone design.
(Credit: Kent German/CBS Interactive)Sony Ericsson's new C510 Cyber-shot and W508 Walkman phone don't break a lot of new ground, but they're certainly worthy of attention. In many ways they resemble other Sony Ericssons that came before them--the W508 looks a bit like the W980 and the C510 reminds us vaguely of the C902.
The W508 is shiny inside.
(Credit: Kent German/CBS Interactive)The W508, of course, is a flip phone with circular music controls on the front flap. It's also thin and light, and you can change between gray and white removable covers. Just above are the external display and the camera lens. The display is small and monochrome so its usability with the camera will be limited. Also, we'd prefer to see a flash on a megapixel camera phone.
The interior display lives up to the Sony Ericsson standards with bright colors and vibrant graphics. The menu interface and Walkman player are also similar to other Sony Ericsson phones, which is to say they're easy to use. We're a little apprehensive about the flat and shiny keypad. The circular keys could be a bit more tactile, but we suppose we'd get used to them over time. Fortunately, the navigation controls are a tad better.
The C510 has a large display but cramped controls.
(Credit: Kent German/CBS Interactive)The C510, on the other hand, is a slim candy bar phone in shiny silver. The huge display takes up almost half of the phone, and its vivid resolution is easy on the eyes. Below are the navigation controls, which are plentiful but also a tad crowded. There's a square toggle with a central OK button, two soft keys, a menu control, and a clear button. The keypad buttons appear to be somewhat cramped as well. We'll wait for a full review to give a final verdict.
The camera lens sits on the rear of the phone behind a sliding cover. The design is a lot simpler than the C902, and that's a good thing. Instead of splitting apart in the middle to show the camera lens and flash, which we always found too complicated, you only need to slide the cover to the right. Unfortunately, there's no self-portrait mirror. The charger port sits on the left spine, and on the right spine you'll find the camera shutter and volume rocker. You'll have to remove the battery cover to use the memory card slot.
The C510 has a sliding lens cover.
(Credit: Kent German/CBS Interactive)On the whole, both phones look promising and their feature sets offer a lot to explore. We'll give them a full shakedown just as soon as we can.
The Sony Ericsson W508 has a Walkman music player.
(Credit: Sony Ericsson)Sony Ericsson expanded its Walkman phone line at CES with the announcement of its new W508 music phone. Sporting a flip phone design that reminds us of the Sony Ericsson W980, the W508 offers the full slate of Walkman features.
Inside there is a music player with TrackID and Sony's Mega Bass, a 3.2-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, shake and gesture control, a speakerphone, video calling, an FM radio, YouTube integration, PC syncing, USB mass storage, modem support, messaging and e-mail, external music controls, a memory card slot, an audio recorder, instant messaging, 3D games, and a personal organizer.
The W508 comes in two base colors--metal gray and poetic white--but each version comes with a "Style-Up" cover than you can use to decorate the exterior of the handset. The white model comes with midnight summer, splashed art, radial blue or street hip-hop covers while the gray handset comes with sunny orange, forest green, architectural purple, or mysterious graffiti.
The W508 will be available in the second quarter of this year. There's no work on U.S. or Canadian availability, but the W508a is a quad-band GSM handset with support for North American and European 3G networks.
There's more than one way to do a wireless MP3 player, and building it directly into a set of headphones may seem like the easy way out, but it gets the job done. Plus, there are none of those audio-fidelity issues you might run into with technologies such as RF and Bluetooth, which is probably why Sony elected to take this route with it's new W-Series Walkman. This 2GB MP3 player is built into a set of impressively small earbud-style headphones and sports a palatable price tag of just $69.
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Sony)
As you might expect, the W-Series Walkman has no screen as is pretty light on extras. Music plays in shuffle mode by default, though Sony offers an innovative feature called Zappin that lets you browse through tracks by ear by playing a snippet of the chorus of each song. You can choose between long and short settings for this mode, and if you come across a song you want to hear, a press of the jog button will start it from the beginning.
The W-Series Walkman, more formally termed the NWZ-W202, has a rather paltry rated battery life by Sony's standards--a mere 12 hours--but given the ultracompact form factor, I can overlook this detail. Besides, 12 hours is more than enough for any workout I can think of. Plus, there's quick charge, which gives you 90 minutes of battery life from a 3 minute charge, and the entire 12 hours in just 30 minutes. The W-Series is expected to be available by the end of March.
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Sony)
Looks like my fellow MP3 editor Donald Bell is gonna have to eat some words, although he was right about one thing: we won't be seeing a touch-screen MP3 player from Sony all that soon in the States. You're going to have to wait until May to get your hands on the X-Series Walkman, which was officially announced at CES 2009. I can wait longer than that, personally, because while this player has some sweet features, there's something about the look of it that comes off as just a touch generic to me. Still, Sony tends to do a good job of giving its portables a nice, solid feel, so I suppose I'll wait to cast my final judgment until tomorrow when I get to lay hands on the player for a photo shoot. (Stay tuned for a slide show a bit later this week.)
In the meantime, about those features: there are a lot of them. The X-Series Walkman offers a three inch OLED display with wide-screen-format compatibility. While the majority of control is taken care of on the touch screen, the player also offers an array of tactile keys, including a dedicated volume toggle and a prominent home button; Sony calls this a "hybrid operation system." Extras include an FM tuner and integrated Wi-Fi, which will allow for automatic podcast updating and streaming from content providers such as YouTube, which you may recall is not presently available on the iPod Touch. The X-Series will offer a fairly wide array of content support--MP3, WMA, AAC, and L-PCM (WAV) on the audio side and AVC(H.264/AVC), MPEG-4, and WMV for video (and that WMV includes the protected variety offered by sites such as Amazon Video On Demand).
Considering the already-impressive audio quality offered by the Sony Walkman line, we weren't expecting much of an improvement in this area on the X-Series. However, Sony asserts that this player will sound even better than any predecessors, thanks to its new Digital Clear Audio Technologies and "S-Master" Digital Amplifier. Also, as with the S-Series, the X-Series will offer integrated noise-canceling functionality and complementing headphones.
The X-Series will be available in 16GB and 32GB capacities, and while Sony wouldn't release an estimated MSRP due to fluctuating flash pricing, I was able to confirm that it will be priced competitively when compared to the iPod Touch. Natch.
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