The Walkman range of handsets has been one of the most enduring and popular range of devices released by Sony Ericsson, and it has been a while since we saw some new handsets in this line up. Just recently Sony Ericsson announced the Spiro, which we took a look at earlier, and now we turn our attention to the second recently announced Walkman device, the Sony Ericsson Zylo.
The Zylo is a more feature packed device than the Spiro, offering a larger range of features, and so attracts a more mid range price banding than the Spiro. A slide style device, the Zylo is compact, but a little thick, which gives it a slightly chunky feel, but that isn’t a negative, it works in favour of the handset overall. The handset is a good weight of 115g, and measures in at 103 x 52 x 12mm. The main display is a standard QVGA resolution, measuring in at 2.6 inches and supporting up to 256,000 colours. The display has an auto rotate feature, which flips the screen over from landscape to portrait view and vice versa, and is covered with an anti scratch surface, which helps avoid those annoying marks that easily get on phone displays from trouser pocket rub. Even so, it is still best to avoid putting your phone in your pocket or bag near coins or keys.
The main feature of the Zylo, then, is the Walkman media player, and if you are choosy about the audio quality of your music, then the Zylo may just be the handset to persuade you that a mobile phone can be a suitable device for listening to music on the move. This is because the Zylo includes support for the HD FLAC audio format, which is a very high quality lossless audio codec. The audio compression used with the FLAC format doesn’t reduce the audio quality of files the way MP3 or AAC does, and so delivers a supreme music experience, used with the proprietary Clear Audio technology. To get the very best sound though, you would do well to use a third party headset and not those which are supplied in the box. Unfortunately, for some reason the Zylo does not include a 3.5mm audio jack, which means using an adaptor with 3.5mm connectivity.
The Walkman 4.0 player has a good selection of themes, and makes organising your music very simple. You can browse through files via artist, album or genre, and you can also create personal playlists. The device also includes support for SenseMe, which allows you to play music based on relative speed and mood of the music. TrackID, Sony Ericsson’s own music recognition facility is available on the Zylo, and is a good way of quickly finding out details of a song, after recording a sample to the device, it is analysed online, and the name, artist, and album information is sent back to our device, usually within a matter of seconds. There is ample memory available on the handset, for storing music, media and other files, with an internal memory capacity of 260 MB, which can be expanded with Micro SD memory cards, with the Zylo officially supporting cards up to 16 GB in size.
Whilst music is the main thrust here, that is by no means all the Zylo offers. Other media options include an FM radio with RDS support, plus a 3.2 Megapixel camera with video record facility. Although there is no built in GPS receiver, the handset offers geotagging support for captured images by using network cell triangulation to determine your location.
The Zylo is a quad band GSM handset, with dual band HSDPA, with upload speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps possible, whilst HSUPA speeds can be up to 2 Mbps. The handset also offers class 10 GPRS and EDGE, which offer a suitable back up for those times when you find yourself outside 3G coverage. For local connectivity the phone includes a Micro USB port for connecting to a PC, and there is support for Bluetooth 2.1, with A2DP for stereo wireless streaming. As well as being well connected for data, the Zylo offers plenty of options for keeping in touch with friends and colleagues on the move. Firstly, the handset can handle push email, and there are also native apps included for accessing Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. The device also includes native support for Blogger, so you can keep your blog up to date directly from your phone wherever you happen to be.
The Zylo will be launching in a range of funky colours, including Jazz Black, Chacha Silver, and Swing Pink. Given the period of time since the last Walkman device released, it is pleasing to see that Sony Ericsson still see life in this range. If the Sony Ericsson Zylo is the device you are looking for, you shouldn’t have to wait long to get your hands on the phone, as it is estimated for release during Q3 2010.
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3:35 pm
This phone is honestly brilliant! I adore it! The memory is great with out a micro SD, sounds awesome. For 3.5 mp its great quality! The texting is great. It might look simple but its deffinetly better than all the other phonees i have had! Love it! 10/10
4:46 pm
This phone is ok. I bought mine a couple of days ago and it's pretty easy to use. One thing that bothers me is the fact that it has a 3mp camera, which sounds pretty good, but when I went to use the zoom button it told me I had to select a smaller picture size. I had to downsize to VGA quality just to zoom in photo mode which bothers me.
2:27 pm
Almost all cases digital zoom means reduce resolution. I never use digital zoom. Better use a camera with optic zoom instead and move closer to the subject.