Sony Ericsson today announced the W710 Walkman®, a phone designed to suit an active lifestyle. New fitness applications and the Walkman® player make it ideal for exercising. The phone also features a 2-megapixel camera and many musical features, including music recognition powered by Gracenote® Mobile MusicID.
The W710 has a self-resetting step counter and a jogging application, which measures speed and distance covered. And, to make exercise enjoyable, the phone is supplied with a 512MB Memory Stick Micro™, which can hold over a hundred songs. Not much, but this can be doubled as an option. All this can be operated via the external LCD screen and buttons next to it, which eliminates the need for opening the phone.
Sports and fitness aside, the W710 is all about music. With Disc2Phone Music Management Software you can easily rip your music CDs and transfer tracks from your PC to your phone. It is also possible to ‘drag and drop’ from music libraries on your PC, and the information about artist, album and track, if available, will be transferred too.
Notably, the W710 has a music recognition facility that allows easy discovery of a song’s title and artist. The user can save a few seconds of a song playing within earshot to the phone and send it to Gracenote® Mobile MusicID, which will identify the track and send back the relevant information.
The quad-band (EDGE 850/900/1800/1900) starts shipping during the third quarter of 2006.
