Sony Ericsson’s ultimate Walkman phone

Hot on the heels of new Cyber-shot and smartphone models announced by Sony Ericsson at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona comes this mighty music-player, the W980i. And not only is it a clamshell to murder close acquaintances for, but the Swedo-Japanese alliance has also added the ‘Walkman on Top’ interface.

That means there’s no need to flip the lid to get at all the juicy musical goodness inside. All the controls, plus a full display for album art and track browsing, are right there on the outside where you need them most.

As well as a Nano-matching 8GB capacity, the W980i includes an FM transmitter for piping tunes to the car stereo. There’s also stereo Bluetooth on board for the bundled wireless cans.

Just for good measure, an RDS-friendly FM radio and a 3.2-megapixel cam have been thrown in, plus Sony Eric’s usual ‘Shake’ controls for skipping tracks.

In short, it looks like the best music spinner since the iPhone. And – in case you were wondering – this one is 3G.

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Sony Ericsson Walkman W980i

Price: £TBA

On sale: Q3 2008

Contact: Sony Ericsson

Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home