New W760: HSDPA Walkman phone with GPS and MSA

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January 9, 2008

New W760: HSDPA Walkman® phone with GPS and MSA

On January 6, 2008, Sony Ericsson announced the new W760 Walkman mobile phone - the eighth Sony Ericsson phone to support the Mobile Services Architecture (MSA) umbrella standard (JSR 248). This tri-band HSDPA slider-style phone features music management with Shake Control and track discovery using TrackID, 3D gaming boosted by an accelerometer and A/B buttons, and assisted GPS.

MSA can now be found in eight Sony Ericsson phone series - the K630, K660, K850, V640, W760, W890, W910 and Z750 – giving developers a range of Java ME programming features including instant messaging/chat and presence based functionality, handling banking, payment transactions, user identification and authentication through secure encryption technology. MSA is supported by the recently released Sony Ericsson SDK 2.5.0 for the Java ME Platform.

W760 in more detail

The W760 Walkman phone has a raft of entertainment options. The Walkman player 3.0 supports a range of audio formats, the SensMe™ feature automatically plots music by tempo and mood, and playlists can be navigated using the Shake Control to skip and shuffle tracks by shaking the phone.

The TrackID music recognition service has proven to be a popular feature of Sony Ericsson Walkman mobile phones – over 125,000 hits per day - and is included in the W760, enabling end-users to identify tracks playing on the inbuilt FM radio or through an external source.

Assisted GPS

The W760 has an inbuilt GPS receiver and comes preloaded with navigation applications for example Wayfinder Navigator and Google Maps for Mobile. There is also a GPS-supported fitness application called Tracker to inform you how far and fast you have been walking/running.

W760 Walkman phone.

Gaming using JSR 256, Mobile Sensor API for accelerometer applications

The W760 supports the Mobile Sensor API (JSR 256), a non-mandated MSA JSR, and comes preloaded with EA Games' Need for Speed™ ProStreet™ border=0> game. This Mascot Capsule v3 game uses JSR 256 to detect movement in the orientation of the phone and translates this input to controlling the car in the driving game.

W760 showing EA Games' Need for Speed ProStreet game.

Landscape gaming mode is supported with A/B buttons. 3D games can be created using the following APIs:

Mobile 3D graphics API for Java ME (JSR 184 1.1)
Mobile binding for the OpenGL® ES API (JSR 239)
Mascot Capsule Micro3D version 3

The W760 will be available during Q2 2008. More information and specifications here>>

Mobile Services Architecture (MSA) on eight phone series

Sony Ericsson now has eight phones supporting the MSA umbrella standard (JSR 248) – the K630, K660, K850, V640, W760, W890, W910 and Z750.

The mandatory APIs supported through MSA include 3D graphics, personal information management, Bluetooth™, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), web services, location services and payment services for Java ME. Sony Ericsson has supported several of these APIs in its earlier Java Platform versions but with MSA there is finally industry alignment and a clear set of expectations on the implementation of these JSRs. With MSA, the mass-market mobile phone becomes an increasingly capable platform for enterprise development and it will be possible to ensure secure data storage and communication and create new innovative applications.

MSA reduces variations in the platform environment and creates a predictable environment for application developers, reducing porting issues when creating new applications and games for mass-market feature-rich phones. The recently released Sony Ericsson SDK 2.5.0 for the Java ME Platform supports MSA and also offers improved on-device debugging through new phone connectivity and the addition of Chinese fonts. More information>>