Remember the Sony Walkman that came back from the dead? Well more light has been shed on this sexy gadget as Sony is pulling most, not all, of the stops with this new media player.
Media player is the key phrase here, because the Walkman does not have all the bells and whistles of the competing iPod, in fact it is labeled as a simple PMP (Portable Media Player)—but the tech in this baby is far from simple. Its eye-popping 4.3″ 400x800p display is powered by a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and 512 MB of ram. It also has 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, FM tuner, and a micro-HDMI port for video output. Full 1080P HD video is supported and plays back smoothly at bitrates as high as 10Mbps. The PMP will NOT come with a camera…but that’s what our smartphones are for right?
Now the icing on this cake is Gingerbread. The Z series Walkman will be running the latest Android OS with full access to the Android Market.
Sony expects users to get about 20 hours of music and 5 hours of video time on the device, which comes in 3 flavors: the NW-Z1050 with 16GB, the NW-Z1060 with 32GB, and the NW-Z1070 with 64GB. Pricing starts at about $360 and tops out around $560.
It’s set to launch in Japan on December 10th, and no word of launch plans elsewhere. We’ll update you as we get more information.
