Announced at 3GSM World Congress on February 13, 2006, the new Sony Ericsson W950 Walkman is a slim, UMTS mobile phone, featuring a QVGA touch screen and 4GB on-board flash memory.   The W950 is the first Symbian OS-based phone in the Sony Ericsson Walkman family, demonstrating the flexibility of the Symbian OS platform to deliver end-users an advanced music and entertainment offering. It is Sony Ericsson's third phone based on Symbian OS v9.1 and the new UIQ 3.0 software platform, providing an open and secure platform also for business and productivity applications. The target group for the W950 is "Young people with an income between 20 and 35 years old" so it is more of a mass-market phone allowing other types of users to discover the potential of an open OS in addition to those of the P-series of Sony Ericsson smartphones. The W950 has a new Walkman player compared to the other Walkman phones (W800, W550, W600, W900 and W810). The UIQ user interface, with the use of a touch screen, is optimal for browsing and sorting thousands of music tracks or album artwork. This UMTS phone includes 4GB internal memory with storage for up to 4,000 tracks in MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV and m4a formats, HTML browsing, audio/video streaming and 3D gaming. Music files can be easily transferred to the phone with the accompanying Disc2Phone PC software or by direct-to-phone transfers from operator download 3G services.

Tuning in to Symbian OS v9.1 and UIQ 3 development

The music experience on the phone can be so much more than the music tracks themselves. Sony Ericsson Developer World contributes to establishing Sony Ericsson as a leader in Mobile Music by creating a Mobile Music ecosystem and recently introduced a dedicated web section to stimulate the development of music-related Java ME applications. The addition of the new W950 sees this resource expand to include Symbian OS and UIQ 3, giving both C++ and Java ME developers the opportunity to imaginatively use music and audio in their applications.

Sony Ericsson hopes that the open Symbian OS, with its history of engaged third-party developers creating a wealth of various types of applications, should be optimal for stimulating creative ideas from the developer community. Using music and sound effects in other types of applications, such as allowing the user to pick his or her own background music in a game from MP3 files on the phone or to create own sound effects for use in the game, adding audio instructions to navigation applications, pronunciation guides for dictionaries or language learning courses - the opportunities are endless.

Visit the Mobile Music Applications resource web page to get technical guidance, docs and tools>>

The recently launched UIQ 3 platform is an open software platform, based on Symbian OS, allowing developers to potentially target all UIQ 3-based phones from different manufacturers, using one single codeline. Applications will automatically receive the look and feel of the device they run on without the need to write extra code for it. The latest version of the UIQ 3 SDK is available for download from UIQ Technology's Developer web portal>>

Java ME CLDC
The W950 supports a range of different JSRs in the Java ME CLDC environment and 3D graphics are boosted by hardware acceleration, both natively (C++) and by JSR 184.

• JTWI 1.0 (JSR 185) consisting of Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) 1.1 HI (JSR 139), MIDP
• 2.0 (JSR 118), WMA 1.1 (JSR 120)
• PDA Optional Packages, supporting the File and PIM APIs (JSR 75)
• Bluetooth API (JSR 82)
• Wireless Messaging API 2.0 (JSR 205)
• Web Services API (JSR 172)
• Mobile Media API (JSR 135)
• Mobile 3D Graphics (JSR 184) with hardware acceleration
• Nokia UI API 1.1

W950 versions
The W950 will start shipping during Q3 2006 in the following versions: 

• W950i Dual mode UMTS for Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa
• W950c Dual mode UMTS for Mainland China (launch for mainland China dependant on availability of 3G services)

More information:

• W950 on Developer World>>
• W950 on Consumer site>>
• Mobile music developer resources>>
• November 2005 news article "Tune in to music application development">>
• Download UIQ 3 SDK>>