Today in New York, Sony Ericsson USA unveiled the W600a, the Walkman branded version of the S600 that was launched earlier today at CommunicAsia 2005.
The W600 is based much on the popular S700 and S710 handsets. The new device sheds some of the bulk and weight of the older models without having to drop too many of the features. While the new phones have the S700's 1.3 megapixel camera, one feature that was sacrificed in the name of size and expense was the memory stick slot. But unlike the similar S600i, the new W600 has a whopping 256MB of internal memory. That should be enough for most people to forgive Sony Ericsson the absence of the Memory Stick slot. The W600 will include a USB cable in the box so that people can quickly copy music over to their device and get rocking.
vibrant mediaOne of the new features that the W600 shares with the S600 is a set of stereo speakers that are built into the device, allowing users to enjoy stereo music and ringtones without the need for a headset. The stereo speakers feature a Stereo Widening system to help with stereo separation and also support Sony's MegaBass bass boosting system.
Also new is the ability to play games in landscape mode, which orients the display horizontally for a better use of the full resolution of the display - which is 176x220 pixels in size and supports 262k colors. In this configuration, the directional controls will be on the left side of the display, and dedicated game control buttons will be available on the right for proper two-handed play. No word yet as to what games will ship on the W800 when it becomes available, but the prototype models we saw had the same games as the S600 (Extreme Air Snowboarding, Gauntlet, and Worm's Fort: Under Siege. The final game list will be determined by the carriers.
It is worth noting that the horizontal mode used for gaming can also be used for viewing videos in their proper full-screen format.
Like the S600, the W600 supports changeable Style-Up faceplates so that you can change the look of your W600 if you are not in love with the orange color that the phone comes in out of the box. The loop style antenna allows the W600 to be smaller than it would with a normal internal antenna - it also should offer up better reception.
On top of the other features already mentioned, the W600 has Bluetooth v1.2 2.0 support (which will work with the new v2.0 capable HBH-610 headset that was also announced). It is capable of playing 30 hours of music with the phone functionality disabled, or 15 hours of music with the phone on. No word yet on talk time or standby time, but Sony Ericsson USA was claiming that both were "excellent".
The W600 is a triband GSM device with EDGE data support that Sony Ericsson expects to be available for purchase in early Q4 of this year. No pricing information has been released at this time, but we expect the handset to be significantly less expensive than the S700 and S710 models were when introduced.
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