HDD based SonyEricsson phone confirmed

[johnny02004976]

wow what a phone, think i'll be upgrading my contract when this one is released, my W800i has been amazing but i think its time to move on

shame bout no camera though, i like to see what i did the morning after a big night out

[JonSt]

Im currently using the k750i, I love it apart from the fading joystick that is losing control. I am definantly going SE for my next phone also. I am very tempted to ge the p990, although I hope it isn't tooo expensive. I don't think I'd pay more than £300. This phoen is an option, the one with the camera anyway.

[BrandX]

Is this gonna be based similar to this then?

http://www.expansys.com/zoompic.asp?...em&code=130381

[Aaron]

Yeah, same basic design. Both with jog dials, 3G, touchscreens and Symbian v9. The m600 has a "keyboard" whilst the W950 has 4GB of memory.

[autopilot]

Yeah, i take your points about the HDD. Hope they will come up with a robust solution, they should be able to0 and there have been some good developments on this front. I would rather have flash than a HDD in some ways (less battery drainage for one), but it's really limited to how much can be used and sill keep costs down and it would be nice to have a good 20+ gigs.

I also really hope they have improved on the K750i/W800i music player functionality. It was good, but better format support and gapless playack would be nice. That coupled with a robust HDD solution and the "ipod killer" might just be here at last, because who will want an ipod then?

[Funkstar]

Obviouslty no-one appart from SE know about the gappless playback part of it (although i'm tempted to try encoding to ATRAC3 to see if it does gapless on the K750), but the music software is completely different. It plays by album and displays album art. The logical way of doing the album art is pulling the data from ID3 (or similar) tags, if that is the case then the player would aldo be able to handle the other tags, just like a real MP3 player (fingers crossed).

[autopilot]

The K750i does not support ATRAC3. I don't particually like ATRAC and all it's proprietary Sony-ness, but if it means Sony can do gapless with thier phone players I would be very happy to see it included

[Funkstar]

right, my mistake. It's AAC and MP3, not ATRAC. Have you tried AAC tracks? i'll maybe have a go at it this weekend.

just checked and the W950 is the same, MP3 and AAC

[autopilot]

just checked and the W950 is the same, MP3 and AAC

Hmm. Sounds a bit 'ho hum'. I think they dont want to kill there stand alone player market.

[Aaron]

I never thought I'd say it but a 3G, touchscreen smartphone with 4GB of memory makes the K750 look positively fat!

[BroadbandPlacey]

using a lowly k700i and its awful - never owned a worse phone!

so im dubious about SE phones - this one does look good though

[TooNice]

That coupled with a robust HDD solution and the "ipod killer" might just be here at last, because who will want an ipod then?

Perhaps someone who would like lossless support (other than wav - can't tag those) and a line out?

I value those features more than gapless.

[autopilot]

Perhaps someone who would like lossless support (other than wav - can't tag those) and a line out?

I value those features more than gapless.

Indeed, a proper line out would be essential. No reason why one can't be added, or at least line out mode for the 3.5mm headphone socket. Although i would really like to see lossless formats, gapless is more important to mine personally than lossless in a portable player because of the types of music/audio i like.

The Ipod's days are numbered. SE could release a device tomorrow with all these features if they really wanted to. But thats not how the phone market works.

[Funkstar]

for a 4gig player that i'll be using while walking around with a set of little ear buds or hooked up in the car, gapless playback is far more important than lossless or a line out.

Chang ethat to 40gig and i might agree with you, but i would rather have the larger selection of alums on a phone personally.

I tries AAC out last night. Quite impressed. the files are smaller than the equivelant MP3 and still sound pretty good. Still no gapless, but i didn't hear any pops which i sometimes got between tracks before.

[just_laze]

What's the attraction of gapless playback?

[Funkstar]

I find it a little annoying when listening to albums and there are gaps that shouldn't be there. I guess if you usually listen to individual tracks or on random, then it would bother you though.