Sony’s First Touchscreen Walkman Revealed

Sony is set to debut a new 16 and 32GB drag and drop Walkman during CES 2009, according to trusted inside sources. This will be the most advanced music, video and photo Walkman music player ever released by Sony to date. While it was revealed before to Wired that Sony’s new Walkman would have Wi-Fi capabilities, we have now learned that Sony’s new Walkman will also be touchscreen and WQVGA. The touchscreen will not be the usual LCD, but a brilliant three inch OLED with a contrast ratio around 10k. OLED display capabilities in terms of color reproduction are far beyond the average LCD, which means 100% color reproduction across a wider viewing angle.

While most of the usual menu structure of the current Walkman series will be retained in this new model, there are several new exciting features included. For example, upon listening to an artist, you may click on the artist name and watch music videos of the artist on YouTube through Wi-Fi (WPA and WEP support included). Additionally, there will be a Youtube icon on the main screen that will allow full access to the website - search, pause, FF/RW included very similar to Youtube access on the iPhone/iTouch. Additionally, this new Walkman will be able to subscribe to audio podcast and Crackle video feeds; this means automatic download of new updates, the ability to delete old feed content, all over Wi-Fi. Audio codec support includes MP3, WMA, AAC, PCM, while video codec support is AVC (h.264), MPEG-4 and WMV.

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There will be built-in search capabilities that can be used to learn more about your favorite artist, and users will be able to purchase full CD’s of their favorite artists through the Walkman at Amazon. A powerful S-Master digital amplifier is built into this device as well as digital noise canceling to ensure optimal sound. On top of all of these impressive features, Sony has also included a FM radio to truly differentiate this product amongst the competition. Also, while the product shots above do not show hardware buttons for music control (previous track, play/pause, next track and volume), we believe this device will have dedicated hardware buttons for this functionality.

..and yes, it comes with a fully functional web browser, but we cannot confirm or deny flash support.

Source : sonyinsider

It’s suggested that the software of the Walkman will remain essentially the same, and there won’t be much difference between the menu structure of current Walkman players and the expected arrival.

There will be built-in search capabilities that can be used to learn more about your favorite artist, and users will be able to purchase full CD’s of their favorite artists through the Walkman at Amazon.