Sony Walkman NWZ-Z1000 Series Smartphones: Specs and Price unveiled

Sony is launching a new range of Walkman called the Sony Walkman NWZ-Z1000 Series smartphones. Powered by a 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor, the walkman will be running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. It will flaunt a 4.3-inch LCD screen with a low reflection technology and a resolution of 800x640 pixels.

The Walkman has a solid and well-built body with a dimension of 70.9 x 134.4 x 11.1mm and weighs around 156 grams. The body of the walkman composes of glass for the display, and plastic for the rest of the body. On the right panel, there are keys for volume and shortcut to the music player. It also features a 3.5mm headphone jack and proprietary charger jack. The charging will be done through Sony's proprietary 20-pin port. The media player will include a Micro HDMI port that can be used to output videos to your HDTV.

Two small speaker grilles will be placed in the middle of back panel but when placed facing down, it will not touch the surface due to the arched back. This will allow the speakers to do their job properly. The button layout is similar to any other touchscreen smartphone or iPod. On the top it has a stand-by/power button, whereas a volume rocker button mounted on the side and a headphone jack at the bottom. Just above the micro-HDMI port, there is a dedicated Walkman logo button called the “W” button. Music purchasing may be done through Sony's Music Unlimited service. The device will feature 512MB of RAM along with a support for Wi-Fi b/g/n, DLNA and Bluetooth. The battery will allow music playback of 14 hours.

The SenseMe software will be also included, which automatically sorts the music collection into 14 diverse mood-themed channels. Five-channel equalization will be available in addition to custom and preset options for different types of songs available. The media player may support ATRAC, HE-AAC, MP3, AAC and Linear PCM audio formats, but it may not support FLAC and Ogg file formats. It may also support M4v, WMV, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and Mp4 video formats. It will play full 1920×1,080 pixels HD video at a rate of 30 frames per second. The NWZ-Z1000 may use an S-Master MX Digital Amplifier with five Clear Audio technologies to help with music playback. These Clear Audio technologies include Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE), S-Master MX and EX headphones.

It will come with two color options including black and red. The walkman series will be launched in March in US with a different price ranges for different storage capacities like 8GB NWZ-1040 model for about $249, 16GB NWZ-Z1050 model for $279 and 32GB NWZ-Z1060 model for $329. It will be available in New Zealand from around starting of April with a starting price of around NZ $359.95 for the 16GB NWZ-Z1050 model and NZ $429.95 for NWZ-Z1060 model. The Android Walkman will hit the Japanese market from December.