Sony Ericsson's W610 Walkman for US plebes

Cheer up, if you're living in the US it's not all bad news this morning -- Sony Ericsson has some love for you too. Meet their new W610 Walkman. Sure, it's not as thin or handsome as the W880 Walkman, but at least it's quad-band with EDGE data making it GSM carrier agnostic in North America. Still no 3G though... but you get an RDS FM Radio, an LED light for your photo ops, and a better battery with up to 25 hours of music playback or 7 hours of talk time. Like the W880, you get A2DP stereo Bluetooth audio, a 2 megapixel camera, and that full suite of music management software. However, unlike the 1GB M2 card shipped with the W880, the W610 ships with a 512MB card. Oh sure, it's not as slim, but the extra few millimeters buys a whole 0.1-inch in diagonal display turf. Sigh, still feels like table scraps eh? Hell, it even ships in Q2, a whole quarter later than the European launch of the W880. SE, did we do something wrong?

Gallery: Sony Ericsson's W610 Walkman for US plebes

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[Deluxe @ Feb 6th 2007 7:36AM]

Sony Ericsson always seem happy to try new button and UI styles, it's such a nice change from the continual barrage of generic trash some of the other manufacturers produce.

[Andrew Clarke @ Feb 6th 2007 7:57AM]

serves the US right for getting the iPhone first. Which is already out of date compared to European handsets. The US is about a year behind Europe in the phone market anyway

[barrowman @ Feb 6th 2007 8:29AM]

Yes, it's such a pity that Apple based it's phone on the US Market and not the European or Asian. Apple has always been pretty understandably US-centric, but imagine todays iPhone being launched in Asia in a years time, it's almost ludicrous. (unless of course Apple have updated it incredibly by then!)

[Bennyishere @ Feb 6th 2007 8:29AM]

I'm happy with my w850i. It's technically identical to the w880i, BTW

[Predrag Stojadinovic @ Feb 6th 2007 10:11AM]

Its interesting that when something launches in the US and nowhere else thats quite normal and even expected, but OH MY GOD something cool launched somewhere else FIRST and WE (the US) have to WAIT??? WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO???

Are you telling us that US is NOT THE WORLD???
Are you saying that the world DOES NOT revolve around US???
You are not serious about the existence of OTHER people on this planet???
And your date is wrong, how can it be 2007 when the world was only discovered 500 years ago, and the first civilization was created a little over 200 years ago!

MAN! I hate you winning, ignorant cry-babies with your idiotic measurements and your stuck-up "WE are the WORLD" attitude! Well NO YOU ARE NOT!

Here's a news flash for you, there's around 6,525,170,264 people on this planet and around 298,444,215 in US. DO THE MATH! Thats means that 95% of people on this planet DON'T CARE ABOUT USA!!! And MOST of them even hate it!

SO DEAL WITH IT!

[Leo Lee @ Feb 6th 2007 11:00PM]

Good Lord... talk about an early morning crank... I see plenty of Euro babies crying about game systems/software being released behind NA... and it's human nature to cry 'How come I don't have what he has?'... calm the f down... it's called jealousy and it's nothing to be proud of to begin with...

[dstang @ Feb 6th 2007 9:26AM]

You need to relax, that kind of anger and resentment cannot be good for your disposition or your blood pressure! We know we live in a world that is large and is filled with different cultures, creativities and cellular devices. :)

Living in a country that invented the telephone, the computer, the internet tends to raise our expectations of ourselves. Spoiled, perhaps. But also we are reminded of what it takes in these times to remain competetive in this quickly advancing, technologicly proficient planet.

[Jim @ May 15th 2007 7:32PM]

Hey! Here's an idea! If you hate us that much, have your army fight our army! I should be easy, since 95% of the world's population doesn't live here! That'll show us Americans!

[Mrmean @ Feb 6th 2007 10:44AM]

Need a tissue?

[Joseph @ Feb 6th 2007 12:29PM]

it makes it even more amazing that the US has the kind of influence and power that it does considering how small our population is.

We make a lot of products and are home of two of the major choices for retail operating systems. We have many computer and automotive companies. when things are not cost effective for our time we outsource them to the rest of the world, pumping their economy full of US dollars.

you're even typing on engadget which has a little copyright weblogs inc... at the bottom. click privacy policy and at the top of the page you see this
331 North Maple Drive | Beverly Hills, CA 90210
USA. A-OK

Might not want to bite the hand that feeds you.

[Patrick @ Feb 6th 2007 8:51AM]

That is a lot of phone updates. I thought I had clicked on "Engadget Mobile"!

[Rus @ Feb 6th 2007 9:08AM]

I love SE phones but hate that that force you into a proprietary headphone set/adapter that protrudes from the bottom of the phone - forcing you to buy a special phone case to use it.

[Rich @ Feb 6th 2007 11:33AM]

> Living in a country that invented the telephone
I assume you're referring to Alexander Graham Bell (a Scot living in Canada)?

> the computer,
I assume you mean the first programmable computer - Colossus invented during WWII at Bletchley Park, England?

> the internet tends to raise our expectations of ourselves.
I assume you mean the WWW, invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, Switzerland?

Just to be clear, which country are we talking about here? :)

[Andrew Clarke @ Feb 6th 2007 12:17PM]

how dare you say the US invented the computer. Look it up, Alan Turing was British. Its not called GREAT Britain for nothing you know.

[Je2037 @ Feb 6th 2007 11:23AM]

@ Predrag:

You, sir, are out of your mind. You obviously must not be from one of those fabled lands that isn't America.

[Je2037 @ Feb 6th 2007 11:23AM]

*You obviously must be from one of those fabled lands that isn't America.

[Snoogans @ Feb 6th 2007 11:29AM]

Has anyone else thought of the awesome-ness that this phone (though I'd rather have the w880, I currently have the w810 and the only thing this upgrades is the A2DP, which the 810 should have had in the first place) coupled with Sony Ericsson's bluetooth earbuds and a Vista notebook with sideshow? this is the sort of seamless integration that was peeped in Microsoft's Oh-so-viral Origami commercial.

But why the hell did they switch from Memory Stick Pro Duo, I already have 2 gb. And will someone please tell SOny Ericsson how successful they could be if they just launched their more stylish phones over here in the states, I weep for not ever gettinig the chance to know the w830, w950, or now the super badass w880, damnit.

[jimbo @ Feb 6th 2007 2:33PM]

I think you meant "plebs"

[Rob @ Feb 6th 2007 1:12PM]

I wonder if this phone also has the nice 'constant hiss' feature that my W810i has...really, you gotta love it! Oh and then there's the shuffle feature for the clicks and pops that come flying at ya way random! Great! That sure does remind me of the quality of the Walkman stuff from way back :/

[Brad @ Feb 6th 2007 2:34PM]

S/E phone geeks: is this an upgrade, downgrade, or sidegrade from the W810? It looks pretty similar to my untrained eye,

thanks.

[totalundone @ Feb 6th 2007 2:43PM]

Rob, if your w810 is hissing, you should upgrade the firmware. It's a free upgrade and you can download the software from SE's site. I never had the hissing problem with my w810i.

Brad, this looks like a mild upgrade. The only differences I've been able to find (besides the obvious physical one) is that it has a2dp, walkman 2.0, the interface, and using m2 memory.

[Rob @ Feb 7th 2007 11:32AM]

@ totalundone

Yeah that's what I hoped would fix it too, but it didn't. My phone is 3 weeks old, it had the hissing when I tried it first time, and it was still there after the firmware upgrade. So then I went looking on the net for a solution...turns out that many more customers have this problem (as well as others, such as mixing up ID3 tags) and best thing is; SE doesn't care! They officially said that they wont address this problem. Funny thing is, the first w810i didnt have the problem, UNTIL their firmware was upgraded. This hiss problem is a software problem, later added because of a bugfix. Talk about customer-service...

[CuriousChickKimmi @ Feb 10th 2007 11:19PM]

this is like my W810.... I rather get the W950i, even though it's much more expensive, it has more memory. I found that the 512 mb was not enough for me.

[SeVeMaS @ Feb 21st 2007 8:17PM]

dear Predrag Stojadinovic, the problem about the US in last is because only in north America (US and Canada) uses a different frequencie (gsm 850 and 1900) and it become expensive to make a phone with all the GSM frequancies when all the "rest" 95% of the worls uses a GSM 900 and 1800).
BTW, take a round trip to Europe and you will be amazed with the advance in the tecnologie, a very small exemple is the FM radio with the RDS that is working sinse 1993 and here in US only sinse 3 years ago.
And you see a lot more advance in cellphones in Europe because they have to concern only with GSM and in US they have to look at the IDEM (Nextel) TDMA, CDMA PCS... so many different tecnologie in a "small" country, is that the "united"? you can't even send or receive messages from a Nextel, and let's stop here for good.