Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman hands-on

The Walkman phone returns

8 September 2011 10:29 GMT / By Chris Hall

  Nestled in Sony Ericsson’s feature phone past is a rich history of Walkman devices, some good, some bad, all purporting to offer enhanced music features, something that many phones will now offer you.
The Mix Walkman is a Walkman feature phone and by feature phone we mean that it isn’t an Android device like the Xperia line, it’s a return to the proprietary OS of before. If it's Android you're after, you'll want the Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman.
The Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman has taken some design cues from smaller Xperia Android devices however, most notably the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini, moving the main control icons of the home screen to the corners.
In many ways the interface looks like Android, so it is at least consistent with other Sony Ericsson phones. From an apps point of view basic social networking is covered and you do get a reasonable selection on the phone. Beyond that we're not certain of the degree to which you'll be able to expand what your phone does.

The 3-inch screen on the front offers up a slightly low 400 x 240 pixels, but it is at least capacitive and in our brief hands-on we found it to be fairly responsive, although this was a pre-production model and some software bugs are still to be ironed out.
To help you find tracks you'll find a Zappin key on the top, along with the Walkman key and 3.5mm headphone socket. Zappin will play snippets of your tracks to help you quickly find something you want to listen to.
All in, the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman is a compact handset. It won't compete with smartphone rivals, but at first glance it appears to cover the bases whilst staying affordable. Of course, it won't bring with it much of the excitement and expandability that cheap Android devices do.
Available for £90 on PAYG, it is available now and we'll be getting it in for a review as soon as we can.
source: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/41971/sony-ericsson-mix-walkman-hands-on