Launched in April 2011, the Sony Ericsson W8 Walkman Phone is the first in the Walkman series to run on an Android 2.1 Éclair operating system. It features a 3-inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. Under the hood is a 600 MHz single-core processor with a 128 MB memory. This, however, can be expanded to 16 GB with a microSD card.
Being a Walkman, the phone allows you to sort your music files according to artists or album. You can even create your own playlists. Using TrackID music recognition, you can download information about a song, artist, or album in seconds. And as it is equipped with Bluetooth stereo (A2DP), you can listen to your music files in full stereo without those pesky wires dangling from your ears.
The phone has a built-in Wi-Fi which allows you to connect to the Internet whether through your home or office network, on through any available hotspot. When connected, you can chat or network with you friends via Facebook or Twitter. You can even watch videos from YouTube, or upload your own and share it with your friends. The phone uses the WebKit Browser which supports standard protocols, videos, and images.
Since the W8 uses an Android operating system, it has full access to Google mobile services including Google Search, Google Maps with Street View, Google Talk, and of course, Gmail. You can also access the Android Market where you can search from thousands of apps and games and download those that are useful or appealing to you.
A 3.2-megapixel camera is included with the phone. It supports geo-tagging so you can include information with the photo file about where it was taken as well as other data. It also has Picture Blogging enabling you to send a photo taken with the camera to a live blog. In addition to taking still photos, the phone can also capture video clips.