iPod touch vs Sony Walkman X Series vs Samsung P3

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Intro

Apple’s iPod touch has some serious rivals in the form of the Sony Walkman X Series and Samsung P3 PMPs.

Which one stacks up as the best for music, video, and all round appeal? Read on as the Tech Digest guide pits these mighty touchscreen handsets against one another.

Battle of the Specs: Feature Comparison

Let’s leave aside fanboy love for Apple and Sony (does Samsung have fanboys too? I’m not sure) and take a look at how the main features stack up.

This is top-of-the-line stuff. If you want detailed specifications you’d better skip to the end of the page.

Display

For pure real estate, the iPod touch trumps both the Walkman X Series and the P3, with a 3.5-inch display compared to just 3-inch for the others.

However, when it comes to aspect ratio, the Samsung’s screen is 16:9 — perfectly suited for widescreen video — whereas the Sony has a rather bizarre 9:5 aspect ratio and the touch 3:2.

That means, in raw resolution terms, the touch (480 x 320) trumps the P3 (480 x 272) which trumps the X Series (432 x 240).

Having said all that, Sony’s screen is based on OLED technology for a much brighter, crisper display than the other two handsets…

MWC 2009: Sony Ericsson announces new W995 Walkman phone

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Just a few days after the fairly basic W395 Walkman phone comes the much feature-laden W995 Walkman phone from Sony Ericsson.

Forget the lacklustre 2-megapixel camera straight away, for this baby comes with an 8.1-megapixel camera (very important, that ‘point one’) with up to 16x digital zoom. Granted, digital zoom — especially on a mobile phone — isn’t much to get excited about (how much grain do you want on that picture of your best mate’s left nostril hair anyway?) and there’s no mention of optical zoom in the preliminary specs, but you do at least get auto focus, face detection, flash, image and video stabilisation, video recording (rate unknown) and video light.

OK, enough on the decent enough camera. This is a Walkman phone, after all, so what about the audio? Well, Sony is debuting its new Media Go application on the W995, letting you “effortlessly and automatically” transfer audio, pics and vids between phone and computer. Yep, something proprietary but then of course you can say the same about iTunes…

Sony Ericsson W395 – a Walkman phone, remember them?

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The next in Sony Ericsson’s announcements of the day is the W395 Walkman phone proving that they’ll still churn them out no matter how much more irrelevant the old 80s brand gets with every passing breath.

Now, that’s not to say that the W395 is not a decent phone. It’s perfectly fine. It’s just that the promise of an FM radio, “high quality” stereo speakers and a graphic equaliser doesn’t really get anyone hot any more.

To make matters a little worse…

Sony Ericsson announces 'affordable' C510 Cyber-shot, and W508 Walkman mobiles

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I always get slightly confused by the way Sony doesn’t group its gadgets by what they are, just by broad product ranges. As a result, there are cameras and phones with the Cyber-shot badge, and MP3 players and mobiles with the Walkman badge. From the product name alone, it’s often impossible to tell what the device is.

Well, to clear up the confusion, both the products here are phones. The first is an ‘affordable’ 3.2 megapixel cameraphone, called the C510. Although there’s a comparative lack of megapixels on the sensor compared to other cameraphones, it’s got plenty of features to make up for it.

Sony prepping touch screen, wi-fi, 16 and 32GB WALKMAN-brand media player

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Sony is preparing to jump on the touchable media player bandwagon, according to sources, with an all singing, all dancing, all touching PMP set to be unveiled at this coming January’s Consumer Electronic Show tech binge.

The WALKMAN-badged player will, so some bloke on the internet told some other bloke on the internet, have a 3″ OLED screen for super-nice colour reproduction and long enough battery life to watch…

Sony Ericsson aims to attract the youngsters with the Def Jam W910i phone

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Sony Ericsson has teamed up with Def Jam Records and The Carphone Warehouse, to ‘bring the bling’ as the press release states, with the limited edition W910i Walkman handset.

Coming bundled with MPS 75 speakers, the phone contains exclusive Def Jam tracks and video, including ditties from Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Janet Jackson, Ludacris, Ne-Yo and Fabolous (full list under the jump). Exclusive…