Sony Bets On New Motion Sensing Mobile Phone

Sony Ericsson has revealed its new flagship Walkman (music playing) mobile phone, the W910i, which incorporates Wii-like motion sensing technology to play games, and control music stored on the device.

According to Sony Ericsson Managing Director Oceania Steve Wilson, the company is targeting the phone at “Pioneer youth,” who are looking to have the latest technology wrapped up in a stylish package.

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A number of features which have that show-off-to-your-friends appeal include the new motion sensing technology, which lets you move the phone around to play games (like you would move a Wii controller around), but also if you flick the phone to the right, it will skip forward a track, or flick the phone to the left and it will skip back a track. Shake it, and it will shuffle the playlist.

Also new to the phone is SensMe technology which basically analyses the tempo, notes and mood of the music stored in the phone and assigns it an emotion, such as happy or sad. This way, if you don’t have time to manually create a playlist of, for example, fast paced songs to listen to the gym – you can simply cue the phone to play all the “happy” tracks in one click.

Another feature is the TrackID service, which allows you to record a snippet of a song that is playing in the background, and the phone will come back to you with the name of the track and the artist. (The charge for finding out the information is only a data charge from your carrier.) If you then wish to purchase the song, you can use Sony Ericsson’s music download catalogue, sourced from Sony BMG. Songs are not cheap though, ranging from $3 – $6 for the convenience of downloading them on the spot, directly to your phone.

This feature is actually already available on some of the mid-range handsets, and what is interesting is that, according to Wilson, the most commonly searched for song on the service has not been some obscure song, rather a Justin Timberlake track. “This makes us think that people are probably showing off to their friends – look see what my phone can do – rather than searching for an answer,” said Wilson.

But apart from these “fun” features, the W910i is an HSDPA slider-phone, with ActiveSync, a 2.4-inch screen and two megapixel digital camera and video camera inbuilt. It comes with a 1GB Memory Stick for storing the music to play via the inbuilt Walkman music player. It is Bluetooth compatible as well and comes in black and red. It will be available from mid-October.

RRP: $999

See: www.sonyericsson.com.au