Sony Ericsson's Walkman in Japan: The W65S xmini

It’s the year 2008 #pastfuturetechnology.

A few phones back I covered the Sony Ericsson W42S, the first Walkman branded phone for the Japanese market. As a reminder, the W in the name stands for the WIN network, not Walkman. And today, I'm covering some new additions of the 3rd generation of the same series – the W65S, an exclusive KDDI au mobile phone.

One of the drastic differences between the two generations is size. The W65S is a tightly compressed phone with a comparably huge battery and tiny slide-out keyboard. The screen shrunk from 2.2" to 1.8" but kept its resolution at QVGA. In step with the technology, our tiny Walkman friend features 4GB of onboard memory and can play AAC bitrates of up to 320kbps, which is the max for this format.

The omission of the camera was necessary to achieve this ultra-compact architecture, and perhaps the target market won't really miss it either. All in all, at the H75 x W44 x D18 mm in size and just 75mg in weight. That's incredible for a 3G device.

Aesthetically, the phone is a stunner. Its colour combos, sleek shiny finish and stylish LED button display resembles the LG Chocolate and yet it has a unique feel to it. Given the obsession the Europeans had with small phones, I think this device would have been a perfect GSM candidate.

Users on KDDI au have access to LISMO services, Chaku-Uta (full length music files) downloads and the ability to transfer their own songs onto the device.