Less than two weeks after the announcement by Sony Ericsson of the support of Sony’s Locationfree for UIQ, Sling Media shows off compatibility of their wireless personal video broadcasting gadget (the Slingbox) for our Symbian 3G or Wifi enabled smartphones. After the jump you will find a pretty cool video of a W950 playing the different TV channels and DVD’s of, and controlling, a remote setup. [Via Techeblog and Engadgetmobile]

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Straight out from the French Riviera, Noreve offers a series of high quality leather cases for almost all current mid-high Sony Ericssons, for those who don’t mind losing some portability in favor of protecting the precious device inside while adding a touch of style and personalization with the many leather colors available. I say losing portability because after trying these with my P990, it just won’t fit any comfortably in trousers any tighter than 50 Cent’s. It shouldn’t be a big problem for smaller models’ users though —the P990 itself isn’t very pocket-friendly anyway—, but it’s fair to say that these cases add considerable bulk to your phone, not to mention if you even attach the huge belt clip. This belt clip led McCoy, reviewer of the black M600/W950 and red P990 cases, to find a funny problem with the back screw, which you can check in the video (in all Superhandz style) after the jump, along with photos of those and my black and white P990 cases.

Go to Noreve’s Sony Ericsson leather cases product page

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Sony’s LocationFree concept makes it possible to stream your own living room’s TV to a PSP, a PC, and now your P990 too, through the (required) LF-PK1 LocationFree Base Station (pictured in the middle) that connects on one side to your TV and on the other one to your broadband network connection, to which you access from your remote device (through WiFi or 3G) no matter where you are. The press release claims that the Location Free Player for P990 is included in the default Memory Stick or can be downloaded from Sony Ericsson’s site (I haven’t found it in neither places though). What is particularily cool about LocationFree is that you can do way more than just watch TV. You can access virtually any device that can be connected to a TV: a videocamera for one-way videoconferencing or surveillance, a DVD player, a PlayStation… Okay maybe not the latter.

On my other point, back in March, Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld was in everyone’s mouths feeds and that’s the reason I made the Adriana at the time. But have you heard of this technology at all since then? I haven’t. Is the release of LocationFree for P990 another case of showcasing all the (latent) potential of SE’s flagship, or an attempt to distract us from the lack of DVB-H development news? Probably both.

Read the Press Release “Sony Ericsson’s P990 goes LocationFree”
Read Cnet’s Review of the LF-PK1 LocationFree Base Station

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Sony Ericsson last week unveiled another cool Bluetooth accesory: the MBW-100, which is the Sony Ericsson-styled, Sony Ericsson-branded result of the partnership with Fossil, which also gave birth to other Fossil-branded Bluetooth watches. No, it doesn’t integrate an earpiece or microphone to go all spy-agent, but it has an OLED display to check caller ID, battery life and received messages. It has buttons to mute/reject callso and to play/stop and skip MP3’s too! Sadly, the display isn’t big enough to display SMS’s or song titles. At ~$300€, it isn’t cheap either. Maybe next time.

Cnet Asia already has a hands-on preview (wait, isn’t that a review?) and here are some interesting excerpts:

A rather nifty feature on the MBW-100 is its out-of-range notification function. When the phone is moved out of Bluetooth wireless range, the watch vibrates to alert the wearer. We found this useful as a security feature since it tells you if someone is attempting to walk away with the phone. (…)

The Bluetooth watch comes with a mini cradle that charges the onboard battery via the contact points located at the back of the watch. It is rated for up to seven days of Bluetooth usage and an additional week for analog time-keeping. (…)

The watch is made of stainless steel with a scratch-resistant mineral crystal glass and anti-glare coating for improved clarity of the display. (…)

For full functionality, the Bluetooth watch is compatible with only specific models in Sony Ericsson’s current and upcoming lineup. This includes the K610i, K618i, K800i, W710i, W850i, Z610i and Z710i. (…)

Despite its chunky design and not-so-affordable sticker price, the Sony Ericsson MBW-100 remains one of the more innovative Bluetooth phone accessories we’ve come across so far. It is, however, not expected to appeal to the mainstream crowd.

Read the MBW-100 review in Cnet Asia (don’t forget to check the images section)
Go to the MBW-100 Official Page

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I waited until I got it shipped because I wanted to see if it lived up to its promises, and it certainly does! If you need a 1 or 2gb USB pendrive, but already have that amount of storage in your Sony Ericsson, this is for you: it just turns your memory card into a USB 2.0 plug and play mass storage device! And the best way to load MP3’s, of course. Okay, maybe not a technology wonder, but it’s as small as it can get, sleek, really fast and it’s price is a joke. How else can you get a gigabyte flash drive for less than 3 dollars?

NOTE: I’m not the seller nor do I get commission or anything, I just LOVE it

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Now that we’ve added all the official photos to the W950 and K610, here’s the first batch of photos of our live coverage of Sony Ericsson’s party at the 3GSM Barcelona. A too-dark-for-great-photos event where 15-20 Sony Ericsson representatives wore W950’s around the neck, each, and where the music was played by a well known DJ Judge Jules from several Walkman Sony Ericssons! The new smatphone’s innovative keypads proved to be totally useable, with the M600’s actually having two presses per key (one for each letter, right press or left press) thus working as a proper Qwerty keyboard, and the W950’s being something not dissimilar to Motorola’s RAZR keypad, in a rubbery, more stylish way, yet very comfortable to use; whose color/graphic design they’re not all happy with, and might be changing before it goes on production, we were told. The negative point in the evening was to discover that only one P990 was hanging around with a really slow interface because the damn thing is still under development (smells like P800 spirit).

Here are other links to live galleries of the new phones:
- Phone Scoop live pics and W950 interface video, showing what lead the guys to the conclusion that the new Walkman “could be one of the most innovative mobile music experiences out there, even more so than the iPod”. [Thanks Eric]
- Mobile-review’s live pics, only in Russian for now, and showing the J100 we have not forgot about.
- Newmobile.nl’s live pictures gallery and videos.
- Mobileburn’s W950 live photos.

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How long have we been dreaming about this? It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s for real, Sony Ericsson has finally made a Bluetooth Stereo Headset in the shape of a couple in-ear headphones and a main unit with a display and keys for volume, track skipping and call answering, all weighing just 27 grams. Yes, there’s still some wires involved, but the main unit hangs lightly around the neck and the phone is in the pocket with no strings atached. The sound quality promises to be as outstanding as the HPM-70, and the battery life is not awful bad at up to 6 hours talk time or playback time, and 300 hours standby. Now here’s something interesting, if you check the compatibility list in its Official Page, isn’t every single Bluetooth phone since the S700 listed? Half the phones there didn’t support the A2D profile for stereo Bluetooth music streaming, did they? UPDATE: They corrected the list, now only the ones with A2DP (P990, M600 and W950 to date) are supported. The price is yet to be announced, but I really don’t care; when it comes out in Q2, I’m getting it no matter what. [Thanks Emil for the quick post]
Read the Press Release

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Still no press releases or photos available in Sony Ericsson’s websites, but along with the W810 announcement they emailed to UCSE, they presented these couple of cool speaker sets, one more portable-ish, one more desktop-ish, to go with the known MDS-70 (which, numbering-wise, should sound better?). The MPS-60 is really really small and pocketable, at 30x55x42 mm, while the MDS-60 measures 54x120x200 mm. They will be available in the first quarter of 2006 at unknown price and in colors Silver, White and Orange.

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The third product announced yesterday is another music accesory. The Walkman-branded MMR-60 is a music transmitter via FM, one of the most ready-to-go ways to connect portable music devices to bigger HiFi equipment like your home/car/party stereo, and one of the favourites of iPod users (isn’t it great to put iPod and Walkman in the same article and not feeling unfair competition anymore? Go SE Go!). If you’re not familiar with this, it’s as simple as choosing an FM band in your phone (in the menu that appears after connecting the MMR-60) and then selecting said FM band in your FM receiver, that must be within 10 metres of distance. Wireless music streaming at 43x27x11mm and a mere 9 grams, connecting to any Fast Port enabled Sony Ericsson, but leaving a replica of the port below if you want to use the charger. Despite being a basic device, Sony Ericsson has released even more official photos than they usually do with phones, and in some you can count up to 5 Walkman logos in the same photo. That’s what I call a comeback. By the way, the Press Release says it will be available in silver, white and black colors (to match your chosen W900) but the Official Product Page just mentions the silver and I haven’t found photos of the other two.
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With the help of Sony (who will be also selling the same product, Sony branded “Cradle Audio CPA-001″), Sony Ericsson has presented a set of speakers of an apparently high quality (RMS 25W output, S-master digital amplifier, neodymium magnet speaker units, shielded speakers and Surround mode) that you sit your Fast Port enabled Sony Ericsson on in order to listen to your Radio FM or MP3’s out loud while charging the battery. According to what I understand from the Press Release, it also has a standard “Line-In port” (3.5mm? RCA?) and Bass/Trebble controls, while the Product Page says something about a “Multi AC adaptor with subwoofer” which if it turns out to be an AC adaptor with an integrated subwoofer it will start to appeal to me seriously. There’s also a “Remote Control” but I can’t help putting it all between quotation marks if they don’t show it in photographs. So far I’ve only found high res pics of the main unit holding both black and white hot W900’s.
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First of all, japaneese press releases, photos and all the websites that published this news, are calling it M2, while Memorystick.org is calling it Memory Stick Micro. Kind of like me always saying Memory Stick DUO Pro when it’s actually Memory Stick PRO Duo (notice the caps). Oh I see, the english press release calls it “Micro(M2)”. It seems Sony Ericsson joined the SD Card Association one year ago to gather information about the MiniSD format in order to make a competitor in its size (just kidding, okay?). Anyway, the M2 (developed with SanDisk) is about 1/4 of the size of the Duo and just a little thinner: 15 x 12 x 1.2 milimeters versus 31 x 20 x 1.6 mm (actual proportion difference in the photo), and “theoreticaly” could come in sizes up to 32gb and speed transfers of 160mb/s. That hopefully means no “Pro M2″ this time. We should expect the first devices using this in SE’s usual product presentation around March, shouldn’t we? [Thanks to everyone who sent this in, and sorry for the delay in posting it]
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As cool as it may be, Bluetooth has never been the most user friendly technology though. The first time you connect a Bluetooth headset to your mobile phone (the pairing), you have to enter the typical 0000 password, and after that, you just have to pair connect them via the phone’s menu every time you turn the devices on. That involves quite a lot of clicks from the menu to the Bluetooth menu, then My devices, select your headset and then Connect. So the new Auto Pairing technology, to be featured for the first time this Christmas in an updated version of the Bluetooth 2.0-enabled HBH-610 (pictured) called HBH-610a, apparently eases both processes by —you guessed it— automatically pairing both devices and then, connecting them everytime they’re on and close together, only asking you to confirm the action. It’s a technology that will only work with Sony Ericsson handsets, altough the HBH-610a and other future AP-enabled headsets will still work with any other Bluetooth handset.
Read the Press Release
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It’s been out for some time now, but in case you missed it, all-imaginable-accesory shop DomL.com has this useful 3.5mm jack adaptor for the new connector generation (K750/D750/W800/S600/W600/Z520). All these phones come with their own stereo headsets but for $9 or 7€ it’s nice to check if your beloved high end headphones sound actually better, plus you can plug some external speakers in. For HiFi and in-car connectivity you can even combine an 3.5mm-to-RCA cable, and if you like this idea but don’t mind the Sony Ericsson stereo headphones, you can totally forget everything you’ve just read and go for the official MMC-60 cable (pictured left). [Thanks Ed Xavier for the tip]
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UPDATE: Emil reminds us of the official HPM-70 Stereo Headset to which you can connect your desired 3.5mm headphones/speakers while keeping the microphone and the handsfree function. This is the one with the in-ear earpieces you get bundled with the W phones.

MartinFields, the creators of the famous screen protectors and other mobile phone and PDA accesories, have just released this retractable USB cable for all the Sony Ericssons with the new connectors (K750, D750, W800, S600, W600 and Z520 so far). The standard USB cable (pictured at the right) is a huge improvement from the old serial cables. It not only makes the Memory Stick DUO in your phone a Plug&Play sorage device: it also charges your phone. But it’s terribly bulky. 1 meter of 5mm-thick stiff cable plus one bulge on each end is just uncomfortable. MartinFields’ retractable cable, while small and light, is supposed to withstand heavy usage. [Thanks Ed for the tip]
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With all they hype and success of the Play Station Portable the production of Memory Stick DUO cards of all kinds is increasing week by week, and SanDisk has announced their new 2gb cards which, apart from the PSP, will be used in our future K750, W800 and D750. Shipping in July, at 350 dollars (278 euros) there are a great number of MP3/video players whose internal hard drives double this 2gb capacity by dozens of times, but you know that different necessities, different solutions, different prices.
Via MundoPSP
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