Sony unveils 5 MPx cellphone, new walkman
The 5-megapixel CyberShot K850 will be the first cameraphone of that quality sold by a U.S. carrier if it’s officially picked up by a carrier, as Sony Ericsson hopes it will be. (The Nokia N95, another 5-megapixel cameraphone, is sold direct by Nokia in the U.S.) A black candy-bar shaped device, the K850 is a relatively slim, sleek phone for something with a 5-megapixel camera, measuring 4 inches by 1.9 inches x 0.67 inches and weighing 4.16 ounces. The phone is very photo-oriented: when you turn it sideways, secondary indicators light up on several of the number keys to turn them into photo option buttons, and previews look great on the 320×240 screen. The cameraphone also has a xenon flash and staves off the shutter delay problems inherent in slow cameraphone autofocuses by using BestPic, a sort of amped-up burst mode that starts taking pictures before the autofocus has fully locked.Sony Ericsson showed a new 5-megapixel camera phone and a new line of Bluetooth watches, both headed for the U.S., at an event in New York Thursday. A new Walkman phone with 8 Gbytes of memory was announced in Europe.
To help send your photos on, the K850 also has quad-band EDGE and tri-band high-speed HSDPA, pretty much guaranteeing that if it’s released with any major carrier, that carrier will be AT&T. Sony Ericsson also updated their line of Bluetooth watches, which are made by Fossil and work with Sony Ericsson’s phones. The new line of watches will be available in the fourth quarter of this year. There, they announced a high-end Walkman smart phone with a keyboard and 8 GB of flash memory, the W960. The W960 also comes with a Bluetooth headset. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, plus UMTS and GPRS. But that device wasn’t on show at the U.S. event, and wasn’t among the releases destined for U.S. markets. At press time, Sony Ericsson representatives couldn’t be reached for comment on whether the phones would be brought to the U.S. in the future.
Comments(11)
Really nice phone, I think im going to buy one if the price isn’t too high. Does somebody now how much this is going to cost?
looks great
Well , I have my w800 here and I love it… and going to be saving up for the k850 since I know no providers are going to pick it up, unless cingular and the iphone sell.
I expect it to retail around 600 bucks… but it will be worth every penny.
The title bugs me, if you really had to shorten it down it should be Ericsson unveils 5 MPx cellphone, new walkman.
That’s hot.
impressive. hopefully the pricetag doesnt induce heart attacks.
Looks interesting.
I have a k800 and it’s pretty good. The trouble is, the pictures aren’t limited by the megapixels, they’re limited by the lens. So if the only difference is the sensor then it’s no improvement over my current phone (the flash and bestpic(tm) that you mention are already in the k800).
Brief moment of boasting. I got mine free with a £15/month contract shortly after it came out, on any network I fancied. Sucks to be a merkin.
the first pic aint of the K850
The K800i was an amazing phone – I loved owning it, but that came short when it died from a well-known (on the net) shutdown problem that semi-bricks it.
I can’t wait for the K850, I’ll be grabbing it as soon as it hits the shops, currently using the new Nokia N95 but it’s not a patch on SE phones.
5mpx pfft, korea have 10mpx camera phones and probably higher, jammy sods!
Who needs 5 MPx – when xoupled with a tiny plastic lens??
i can assure you, 5 year old semi-dSLR cameras look MILES better.
there’s only so much light that can reach the ccd when you use a tiny lens. that means that the ccd needs to be extremely sensitive – and that causes EXTREME NOISE.
there just isn’t getting around the fact that you need quality optics, for quality photography.
what IS good about the phonecam race, are new inventions like Micron’s SHAKE REDUCTION – on chip.
cramming more megapixels into phones is like putting 500bhp engines on Front Wheel Drive cars – pointless!