Sorry, third-parties, all JAVA-enabled Sony Ericssons now have official support from Microsoft to run their new Windows Live Messenger Mobile application. MSN/Windows Messenger site Mess.be found this goodie in a chineese MSN website. Well, actually, functionality may be a little below some other JAVA clients, but if you’re like me and only need your contact list and being able to chat with some few emoticons, you’ll take this Windows Live themed instant messenger over anything else. Apparently these download links (be careful to chose the version for your model) are completely legal and free to download, but after a couple of months they will stop working unless you pay a small unknown monthly fee. Hmm, let’s just enjoy it in the meantime and we’ll talk again in January. Check some screenshots of it running on K800 inside this entry. [Via Mess.be].

For Sony Ericsson J300, K300, K310, K500, K510, Z520 and Z530, Download Windows Live Messenger Mobile 380

For Sony Ericsson K610, K700, K750, W550, W600, W700, W710, W800, W810, W850, Z550 and Z710, Download Windows Live Messenger Mobile 382

For Sony Ericsson K790, K800, S700, W850 and W900 (it should also work for Symbian smartphones), Download Windows Live Messenger Mobile 384

If your exact model number isn’t listed here, make sure your phone supports JAVA and then download the version of models using the same screen pixel size.

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UPDATE: Download links working again

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Tired of my K750’s remote control template for Media Player lacking a couple of functions, I have customized it a bit and thought I should share it with you. As you can see in the background image, it’s the same template but adding the Shuffle, Repeat, Full Screen and Mute functions of Windows Media Player. If your phone has a smaller screen resolution than 176x220 you can resample the image and edit the template with the Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Remote Control application.

Download SuperMediaPlayer.hid

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We missed this CeBIT report on time, but Olav from Esato.com did a pretty good job posting (big) photos and first-hand impressions of the new Sony Ericssons (and others) from Hannover:

Entry level phones J100, K310, K510, W300/Z530 and W810 [?]: Weighting only 70g makes [the J100] the lightest model ever by Sony Ericsson. (…) An untrained eye could have misstaken the Sony Ericsson K310 with a K700. (…) I was told the new M2 cards could be used with an adapter in older Sony Ericsson models.

Hands on Sony Ericsson M600: This is an exciting new feature found in M600, W950 and P990. The new spell checker. Once you start writing a word, the M600 list the best suggestions. The list of suggested words is based on the sentence content as well as word grammar. Very cool.

P990 showing very cool features: Joseph started typing “Dear ” using the stylus with handwriting recognition. The P990 responded with inserting “Sir” as a suggestion to the next word in the sentence. After clicking on “Sir”, a space was automatically inserted, and the next word “and” was typed. To finish off, P990 suggested “Madam” as the final word when this was typed in “Dear Sir and “. It did not need the “M” to suggest “Madam”. Impressive.

Sony Ericsson K800: The two buttons you see above the display is short cuts to common settings when capturing photos. The give you direct access to scenes and shoot modes

Hands on Sony Ericsson W950: The W950 should be equipped 4GB memory. The file explorer reveals that this prototype only have 64MB installed.

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If the W300 is the attempt to bring the Walkman brand to the budget market, the K510 could be the same for the Cybershot brand. Only it’s not Cybershot branded and the interface is the old (K700/S700/Z800…) one, but you get the point when you see a 1.3 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom in a handset that’s going to cost around 175€. Also with a 128x160 262k color screen, 28mb internal memory, Bluetooth, Infrared, HTML browser, RSS reader and USB 2.0, it makes you think about how rapidly the technology goes down the price range (just to refresh your mind, back in its day the then high end T610 had a quarter-VGA camera and 2mb internal memory). It’s also quite compact at 101,5 x 44 x 17,5 mm and 82 grams, about 1mm taller, 2 narrower and 3 thinner than a K750. It will be available in Q2 this year as K510i and K510c for EMEA and China respectively (Triband GSM 900/1800/1900) and K510a for Americas (850/1800/1900) in colors Midnight Black and Polished Purple, which has a neat vertical stripes pattern in the front cover (see detail photo after the link). Oh by the way, Mobileburn has some live photos of the K510, and so does Newmobile.nl.

K510 Official Page
K510 Press Release

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Now this is how you do business. It seems like Sony Ericsson invested last year’s well earned profit in broadening their portfolio like we’ve never seen before. With todays 6 phones it’s already ELEVEN headsets unveiled in just the first two months of Q1 2006! Most of them being really intresting; some of them being certainly innovative, even revolutionary.

Revolutionary within the brand is the new K800/K790 combo, the first to sport the Cybershot brand (and features) from Sony, and the best camera ever seen in a SE: 3.2 megapixels with Autofocus, Xenon flash, image stabilizer, 16x digital zoom, auto red eye reduction, DPOF and PictBridge direct-to-printer connectivity, and BestPic technology, which takes 9 pictures in a time sequence (4 before and 4 after the actual image captured). The feature set of no less than the K750’s successor goes on: 2.0″ 320x240 pixel 262k color screen (also first timer in SE), 64mb internal memory, Memory Stick M2 slot, Radio FM with RDS, Bluetooth 2.0, Infrared, A/B buttons on top of the screen for horizontal gaming, integrated blogging and picture blogging powered by Blogger, integrated Google Search and RSS feeds. And of course, Walkman music player This bunch of great features need space, and that’s a weight of 115 grams (16 heavier than the K750) and a size of 106 x 47 x 18mm (6mm taller, 2mm wider and a couple mm’s thinner, although the lens cover area adds 4mm to those 18). The difference between K800 and K790? The K800 is UMTS/Triband GSM/GPRS (no EDGE) and has a frontal VGA camera, while the K790 is Triband GSM/EDGE with no 3G and no frontal camera. We’ll have to wait no more than Q2 this year to find them in stores, as K800i and K790i for EMEA, K800c and K790c for China Mainland (GSM900/1800/1900), and K790a for Americas (GSM850/1800/1900). All the official pics of the new flagship candybar and short summary of the rest of them after the jump, and info on the rest of the new products in a little while.

K800 Official Page
K800/K790 Press Release

UPDATE: Wanna guess who already published a review of the K800? With photos comparing it to a K750… OUCH!

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