Sony Ericsson dropped two new pieces of gear on its North American faithful today, along with a few higher end handsets with quad band GSM support (but no US-spec 3G bands) should you care to import them for use in the US. SE also talked about their "vision for convergence of mobile content and services," kind of like everyone else has been doing as of late. But on to the gear...
The W380 is a Walkman phone built around a clamshell design with a few interesting features like an external OLED display and "Gesture Control," which lets you "mute calls or silence the alarm with a wave of your hand." Packing a 1.3 MP camera, stereo Bluetooth, and M2 memory stick support (a 512MB card is included) into a GSM phone isn't necessarily a great feat, but any new SE handset made for the North American market is welcome in my book. The 16mm thick phone will be available in purple come Q1 2008.
SE's MD300 USB Mobile Broadband Modem promises to bring HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE, and GRPS data to your laptop so long as you've got network coverage and a free USB port. The modem will ship with MS Windows software and drivers built in, and promises plug and play, auto-configuring support (Mac users will have to download drivers). Available in "luxury black and metallic silver," the MD300 should also ship in Q1 of next year.
And then there's the W890, a super slim Walkman phone that supports the special to North America GSM 850 band but lacks US-spec 3G support. This update to the W880 somehow packs 2GB of storage, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and the latest Walkman software into a 9.9 mm thin profile. But that UMTS/HSDPA over the 2100 MHz band isn't made for our fair shores. Sigh.
Oh wait, one more: The K660 is another quad-band GSM/EDGE phone with UMTS/HSDPA 2100 support. A candybar handset, the 660 is "Web Optimised" with landscape browsing, Web shortcut keys, and integrated Google Maps for Mobile right out of the box. This one will feature a PC-like mouse pointer and pan and zoom functionality during Web browsing, along with a 2 MP camera, and is targeted at "Generation Web," whoever that is (SE says it's the young folk).
Both the W890 and K660 will be available in select markets starting in Q1 of 2008.
