#MWC09: Sony Ericsson Idou, W995 Walkman, Play Now Movies and other services

Sony Ericsson Idou touchscreen phone

Sony Ericsson made a splash again yesterday at their MWC 09 press event.

Last year it was Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 Windows Mobile smartphone, today they’ve introduced 3.5″ full touchscreen 12.1 mpx Symbian smartphone – Sony Ericsson Idou.

SE Idou is not yet quite ready for the primetime and will be officially launched sometime in the second half this year. But what Sony Ericsson let us glimpse, looks mighty impressive.

Good design, impressive specs, interesting user interface and open Symbian OS for all additional software apps and games.

Of course the devil is in the details and it is hard to say what the final product will feel like.

The questions that remain to be answered are – responsiveness of the touchscreen, the smoothness and speed of the user interface, integration with various Sony Ericsson services and, of course, third party applications for Idou in SE’s own software store.

Here’s the video I made during Sony Ericsson’s Idou presentation (sorry for the shaky hands:) ) :

And also some live shots of the SE Idou from yesterdays presentation:

Sony Ericsson W995 Walkman phone

Another new announcement yesterday was Sony Ericsson W995 Walkman phone.

And it looks like a beginning of a new promising trend at SE – putting all the coolest functions/specs on a single device. I no  longer have to decide what kind of the phone I’d want to buy. A music phone with subpar camera quality, or a camera phone with the music functionality as an afterthought.

SE W995 has it all. It’s your standard Walkman phone with enhanced music functionality and it’s a powerful 8.1 megapixel cameraphone that can rival any Cybershot phone out there. Well, Sony Ericsson says that W995 is also a “video driven” device, and it can certainly play videos. But the 2.6″ screen on W995 Walkman is just to small for my taste.

I guess I’ll have to wait until Idou comes along for a full blown music/camera/media player smartphone from Sony Ericsson.

Here’s a video of Sony Ericsson W995 introduction:

New Sony Ericsson services and software

And the last thing worth mentioning is SE software and services improvements. These include:

• MediaGo software to seamlessly transfer media files between your SE phone, PC and other Sony devices. We’ll be checking out later of how exactly this software works. What I can tell you from the presentation is that there will be various options to get your file to and from the phone – Wi-Fi/DLNA, Bluetooth and wired connection. And it should be very easy.
• Expansion of the Play Now Arena to more countries. Including music subscription and download service
• New PlayNow Movies service. It will be subscription based and will offer unlimited movie downloads to SE phones via PC. Though they did not mention whether this will include only Sony movie catalog, or other studios too.

Sony Ericsson also promised a lot more   announcements in software and services part of their business.

I’m pretty sure about one of them – with full touchscreen Symbian device just around the corner, SE owned app store is almost assured.

As for the rest – we’ll have to wait a bit.

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Posted on 16 Feb 09 - Filed in Sony Ericsson, Wireless - Comments - Written by Staska

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