The closest to being in Tron. Or in a big, virtual reality videogame. Several matches in the dark with pounding background music for the sake of the players’ confusion —who kept it cool and played quite impressively—, and a fashion show from Rubén Gómez Navarro that was… let’s say… “bright”. Standing out was a gigantic screen on one side of the court that showed the score and the players’ names, in a neatly designed animated way. Sony Ericsson style if you will. When the championship finished, the court was to be the dancefloor, and Groove Armada the entertainers (Darren Emerson the previous day) with a great Video Dj performance in the mentioned screen. All in all, even if we didn’s see any single darn phone, Night Tennis is a perfect showcase of Sony Ericsson’s innovative spirit. Only one advice for those who plan to attend to the next show in Miami: non-epileptics only. Follow the link for the videos and some photos taken with the help of a (W800) cameraphone, always better than regular cameras when it comes to capture flashy random lights in the dark.

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They’ve gone nuts: look what Sony Ericsson is preparing during the SE Championship Tour for the nights of November 9th and 10th in Madrid, Spain, as the first in a series around the world: black tennis court illuminated solely with UV light, 8 players wearing neon clothes, a bright ball and background live DJ music from no others than Groove Armada and Darren Emerson, as well as neon-wear catwalk fashion show from Ruben Gomez Navarro, all deep into the night. I’m not exaggerating a bit: in Darren Emerson’s words: “I’ve DJ’d in interesting places and situations and also weird ones, but this is going to be the most amazing of all”.

Free tickets are available to Spanish residents via SMS so if you’re going to be around the capital by next week, check out our spanish post on this topic for more details, or go to Nighttennis.es. No word on what is going to be the next city to welcome another Night of the Dancing Neon Mobile Phone Freak.

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To give some competition for the Adriana, Binsz, a member of our forum, has 3D modelled a couple of sleek futuristic concepts dubbed Zeus and Siren, whose looks are reminiscent of the Sony Ericsson Black Diamond (also made by a fan) that finally made it to production inependently without the Sony Ericsson branding. Both are slim and compact at 100x50mm and 100-120grams, and feature all-covering 95x45mm touchscreens in the same fashion of some Nokia and BenQ concepts seen lately, which pretty much tells us what some devices will actually look in some years.The Zeus (or P1000i) is a one-way slider with an integrated Qwerty keypad, while the Siren (or W1000i) has two sliding halves with speakers at the back and more touchscreen area on the front. Just look at the pictures, it would be perfect for a professional version of the Music DJ! Binsz is working on another waterproof iteration called Sparta/R1000i.

Discuss this in the Binsz concepts forum thread

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It’s been a long and painful hiatus here at clubsonyericsson, but we’re officially back to reporting all Sony Ericsson news, starting with something that’s not so news, but pretty hot.

What you see on the photo could be Sony Ericsson’s first Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld enabled device, a feature they say will be on every model in the future. It could play videos and digital TV streamed wirelessly and even record them in its internal 10gb memory. That would allow for some live time-shifting too. It could be the first to be operated in landscape mode (except during calls, obviously) and to introduce an iPod-esque clickwheel for scrolling and fast-forwarding AS WELL as the traditional 5 or 9-way joystick it surrounds. It could have two additional softkeys to the right of the 3.5″ 800x600px screen that would replace the “back” and “C” buttons and make the interface even more flexible and powerful. It could also sport a Memory Stick Micro slot to support those 32gb cards that Sony claims will be available some day not soon.

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As we just said, an internal SE source has confirmed that there will be two product presentations on days 11 and 18 of next month, the second one being “the sh**”. Now these spyshots of a 1.3 megapixel clamshell (-version of the K510?) with “SE123″ labels all over the place have appeared, and make total sense to go official on the 11th while the 18th could bring a… Sony Ericsson Handycam? Hey, spreading rumours dreaming is free. [Via somewhere in PConline.com.cn. Thanks Giancito for the tip!]

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May is going to be unexpectedly exciting with two Sony Ericsson product presentations on the 11th and 18th of that month, the second one being “the sh**”, an internal source confirmed (the Handycam?). In the meantime, you can print out this couple of PDF’s and make it your bathroom reading matter for some weeks [Thanks Djraven for the links]:

K800 Whitepaper (includes complete comparison table with K750):

Bluetooth PAN to connect the phone to Internet using Bluetooth.

Image formats
VGA (640x480 pixels)
1 MP (1280x960 pixels)
2 MP (1632x1224 pixels)
3 MP (2048x1536 pixels) or
3 MP (2000x1500 pixels) with image stabilizer on.

- Photo key (upper/right): Camera mode: Camera scenes or Video Night mode / Standby mode: Camera album.
- Photo key (lower/left): Camera mode Camera or Video shoot mode / Standby mode: The most recent taken picture showed in full view.

Support [amont known others] for WMA music files and WMV and RealVideo video files.

UIQ 3.0 Product Description:

[Transition effects] A menu that slides on to the screen, instead of simply appearing on the screen, is an example of a transition effect; an icon that gradually blends in to the background and then disappears is another example. (…) UIQ also supports semi-transparent windows, which enables UI elements, like menus and dialogs, for example, to have rounded corners or to let the screen area behind the window shine through. (…)

The Memory Manager handles low memory internally. It asks background applications to gracefully close down in order to free up memory. No data or settings are lost since all applications save data before closing. (…)

UIQ supports both bitmap fonts and Unicode True Type fonts. (…)

Categories to organize contacts; a contact can belong to one or several categories. (…) Backup and restore functions for all the entries [contacts] to and from external memory cards. (…) If the end user has installed an Instant Messaging (IM) application that use the Instant Messaging Integration API (…) the end user can see status and presence information in the Contacts application and use a direct navigation link to the IM application.

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Despite the odd big clock and totally non-Sony Ericsson navigation buttons, Kiddy Boy’s interpretation of a possible “white dream” W1000 swiveler and his Photoshop skills earned him more than half your votes… and a W600. It would be the first of a kind of ultra wide display mobile phones, with a 2.8 inch, “GVGA” 240x400 pixel, 16 million color screen. Still positioned under the Walkman brand, it would also offer a 4 megapixel camera and the internal memory wouldn’t be below the gigabyte. Reminds me of that rumored second Ophira/Sakura focused on imaging more than on music. Our personal favourite? It was curiously the least voted, Immanuel’s “codename Helen”, and we loved that authentic “fake” feeling. Congratulations to the winner and the rest of the contestants, we look forward to see more of your work around forums worldwide from now on

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Some look like spy shots, some like renderings, but do they all look fake? It’s time to forget this was all a competition and select a winner from the point of view of the average rumour freaks we are. Thank you every one who submitted an entry and congratulations to the finalists, the W600 is waiting for one of you! The poll (after the link below) will be open until the 24th of December 23:59h Central European Time. Good luck!

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As an excuse to give you the oportunity to win a Sony Ericsson W600 (donated by the kind people at Sony Ericsson USA) and well, to celebrate the third year of this website of ours since the first headline reading “P800 ready for mass production”, we’re asking you all to use your Photoshop, drawing, 3D modelling or pottery skills to create that spy photo, that future phone we’re all expecting. The W600 would be your favourite Christmas present, so we’re setting the deadline on December 18th at 23:59 Central European Time to then give everyone the opportunity to vote the best five for one week. Send your entries to lgcc clubsonyericsson com with the subject “UCSE Fake Design Competition“, a brief description of its features and suggested model name (i.e. P200 ). Blurry low resolution images for enhanced credibility, as well as sense of humour, are welcome Checking the Rumours section is totally recommended for inspiration too. The standards have been really high since that T330, but if you think you don’t have design skills, try something just original and with sense of humour! YOU could win!

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I’ve got the press releases since today morning (Sunday 12) but I haven’t been able to publish the news until now (It’s 2:00am GMT). The good part is that, of course, we have new phones! And Ellen has a pretty new name —S600— and really interesting specs, like 64mb internal memory, HTML browser, 176x220 pixels 262k color 1,8″ screen, integrated double stereo speakers, 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, USB support and a bunch of 3D games that can be played holding the phone horizontally (with the support of two extra buttons at the right of the screen), conventionally, or in “L” shape, with the rotating keypad open. The bad part, for the moment, is that Sony Ericsson hasn’t uploaded the official photos to their website and we won’t know if it also looks good until 9:00 am or so (six hours to go).

Zoe, surprisingly, seems to be a nice little clamshell phone with decent features. Its official name becomes Z520 and excels the Z600 with a VGA camera, 16mb of internal memory, MP3 support, USB support, integrated handsfree speaker and a series of colorful leds all around the perimeter of the phone that flash in costumizable fashion (even synchronized with the melodies) when someone calls or an sms is received. The press release highlights the small size of the phone. The internal screen is the same of the Z600 (a TFD with 65k colors and 128x160 pixels), and the external is a 4k color 101x80. The Z520 gets the honour of being the first quadband Sony Ericsson: it supports the 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 GSM bands. This two phones use the new charger-data connectors.

The J200-based J210 and the K600-spec’d K608 won’t be any great surprise but we’ll have to wait for the photos to see if they’re any cooler than the phones they’re based in. The J210 upgrades the 128x128 pixel STN display from 4k to 65k colors while keeping the Infrared, 600kb internal memory and triband support. I’ve heard that the K608i will be an operator exclusive but I’d say it could be a sim-free version of the Vodafone V600.

By the way, new accesories have been also announced: the HBH-610 headset with Bluetooth 2.0 support, the HCB-700 car handsfree kit with a screen, the sporty HPS-60 wired stereo headphones and a new PC card that combines UMTS and WiFi access, the GC99. Nothing is said about the future 4gb Memory Stick DUO cards but this was confirmed to me by a Sony Ericsson representative.

Continue reading for complete spec tables of the phones (NO PHOTOS): Continue reading… (more photos)

It is already well known, thanks to the forum and some other places of the Internet, that Sony Ericsson is going to show a few new cell phones next Monday. We have managed to get some “in advance” info, and this is what we know: only 3 new models will be showed, and all of them will be of a lower category than the K750. We don’t know exactly which models are, but, looking at the characteristics the internal sources told us, and giving that all models will be ranged in the medium-to-low category, we suppose they will be Ellen, Zoe, and Eva. It is also very likely that the new 4gb MemoryStick Pro DUO will be showed along with the new models.

Regarding the people who have been impatiently awaiting the very anticipated Hermione (Sony Ericsson’s next smartphone, substitue of the P910) to be presented this Monday, we have to say that the next presentation, in which it would be surely showed, will not take place until October or November, later than usual in Sony Ericsson. That is because the models presented then will not get to the market until next year, so we can effectively assure there will be no P1000 until 2006.

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I just received my invitation to the press conference that Sony Ericsson will be holding in Madrid (and presumably in some other cities around the world) on March 1st in which they will:

1. Release new multimedia phones and advanced multimedia accesories focusing to the new concept of music.
2. Presentation of the first Walkman® Sony Ericsson.
3. Expectations for 2005.

So yeah, that means at least three new phones (Walkman, Clara and K300?)
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Just a quick note to let you know I have just received a press release from Sony Ericsson talking about new phones Z800 and K600. The Z800 is just the unvodafoned version of the V800 with different —and more appealing— covers. The K600 is quite a surprise. A 3G improved K700 (dual UMTS/GSM Triband 900/1800/1900) or a candybar V800/Z800. From the specs that’s what it looks like (sort of): 1.8″ 262k color screen, 1.3 megapixel camera with active lens cap and Radio FM. Not the most detailed press release in the world, certainly, but we can guess the screen is 177x220 pixels and that it has MS Duo support (probably not Pro). From the photos I also guess the camera on the front, just for videocalls, is only VGA or less (0.3 megapixels), as the one in the Z1010. The TrueUSB support borrowed from the V800 and the side shortcut keys from the good old japaneese Premini add up to the exciting pack of features. A poll about why they called it K600 being better than the K700?. By the way this is NOT the so-called K750i, since the camera is 1.3mp and not 2mp as the K750i. UPDATE: The K600 supports NO external memory, at all!
Go to the K600 forum thread (photos)
Go to the Z800 forum thread (photos)
Go to the K600 official site
Go to the Z800 official site

Having finished the 2004 season of product presentations, in which Sony Ericsson introduced 7 new phones to the market, all expectations now point to what’s rumored to be an exciting 2005, with at least 8 new models. We are all logically looking forward to what should come to life before the Cebit in March, but we will see no P910 subsitute so soon. An official source confirmed to Club Sony Ericsson that there will certainly be a “P1000″ (improbable name) with some of the stuff we are expecting such as WiFi and megapixel camera… but —and this is the news— it will not be a 3G phone. There must be of course a marketing reason not to make a P800-concept based UMTS smartphone yet, but we enthusiasts will be dissapointed without fail with this decision. Other exciting entertainment-focused phones (3G and not) should keep the thrill up however.
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