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On Monday August 22nd 2011AD, I was pleased like puss to announce to y’all the return of the Sony Walkman phone as heralded by DigitalTrend. It appears that the smartphone Gods have answered my many fervent prayers and ritual goat sacrifices to them here in Clarendon – or they may have just read my articles.

Starting with Microsoft Kin, Sony Dash, Chrome OS and Google Nexus One – The Comeback Kids, and other articles such as Motorola Xoom – 101 on How to Beat the Apple iPad and the more recent Web-enabled Television Sets Sales Rise – The Apple Television cometh where I made passing reference  to the idea of adding a SSD (Solid State Drive) slapped onto the electronics of the older Walkman. The idea I dreamt up looks like this picture below:

To what may I owe this revival?

Google Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread, which seems to have breathed life into an otherwise excellent product, thereby raising it from the dead like Lazarus. Drumroll please as you take a gander at the photo of the Sony Ericsson Walkman Smartphone, dubbed the Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ as shown below:

Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ Head of Product Marketing at Sony Ericsson Nikolaus Scheurer slathers on the layers of platitudes: “Consumers want smartphones to deliver a rich and social entertainment experience. Rather than a one dimensional music experience, they want instant and seamless access to new content, combined with the ability to share and connect with their friends. The Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman provides exactly this, in a powerful package with great style.”.

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The specs are straightforward as a Blackberry as laid out in Sony Ericsson Press Release on the smartphone as one would come to expect from the company that brought you the Playstation vita, slated for a 2012AD release as per Kelroy’s article PlayStation Vita’s US and Europe Launch Delayed until 2012 .

Now on with the specs roll call!

Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ smartphone is a 3.2 inch 480 x 320 pixels Capacitive touch screen (and scratch resistant Gorilla Glass!) smartphone which comes in Black or White. It has dimensions of 56.5 x 106 x 14.2 mm and this smartphone contender weighs in at a decent 115 g!

Not stellar but ok!

The Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ smartphone packs a 1.7Ghz processor and  is a Quad Band (850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 1900MHz) GSM beauty packing a 2GB MicroSD Slot for Music and 320MB in onboard memory….albeit I suspect it may be able to handle up to a 64GB MicroSD Cards by launch time (fingers crossed!)

As is now standard with most smartphones, it uses a MicroUSB port to do its charging of it s 1200 mAH battery which gets you:

  1. 14 hrs 15 min of Talk time GSM/GPRS
  2. 600 hrs of Standby time GSM/GPRS
  3. 6 hrs 42 min of Talk time UMTS
  4. 850 hrs of Standby time UMTS
  5. 17 hrs 30 min of Music listening time
  6. 6 hrs 30 min of Video listening time

The MicroUSB also doubles as a Data Transfer port. Not that you will ever use it, as it‘s packing a Triband 3G Radio (850MHz, 1900MHz, 2100MHz) radio with Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11n) support, should you feel to live off the land. 3.2mm jack white Headphones as shown above are optional, though you can opt to use wireless Bluetooth headsets should you so desire, which is standard along with the integrated GPS.

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And in a nod to the current trend of Video Calling the Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman™ comes with a 5 Megapixel rear facing camera with a VGA front facing camera, great for Video Calling.

Never mind the low-grade hardware, it’s the software that is running this returned-from-the-dead smartphone that has me excited: Google Android 2.3 aka Gingerbread which means the Google Marketplace choc full of free Google apps and free games!

The music storage space is disappointing and so is the battery life as bigger is better with Multi-media smartphones. But Android OS saves the day, as its design suggests that the smartphone can stream Music and Video, as it is clearly optimized for Music and Video playback via Sony’s music service, Qricity and other available via downloading their relevant apps from the Google Android Marketplace.

But most interestingly it the fact that this smartphone has Facebook integration out of the box suggesting that the makers of the smartphone have made an obvious nod to Social Networking place on a smartphone platform. Hopefully information will be forthcoming to its launch date in the Western Hemisphere [read the US of A] as it is my dream revival of the Sony Walkman come to life!

For details click on the official Sony Ericsson Press Release here!

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