Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman and Mix Walkman: Hands-on shots

Sony Ericsson’s recently announced Walkmen - the Live with Walkman and Mix Walkman - were also doing the rounds last night along with the Arc S, Xperia Ray and the Xperia Active. We got a hold of them and made them pose for the camera.

The Live with Walkman (left) is the bigger of the two and the more powerfully specced; coming with a 3.2-inch touchscreen, a 5-megapixel camera that records 720p HD video and running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Other features include a front facing camera (VGA), Facebook Inside Xperia integration and other Sony Ericsson regulars like xLOUD, TrackID (essentially the original Shazam) and an Infintie button, that allows you to perfrom quick searches for currently playing artist info, music videos and lyrics.

You get just 320MB In terms of storage but the microSD slot means you can bulk this out, up to 32GB.

Build and design-wise the Live with Walkman has a lot in common with last year’s Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 - a compact Android phone that was priced at the lower-end of the mid-range spectrum. The shape of the phone and the volume rocker are pretty similar.

Slightly smaller but by no means lacking in music playing credentials is the Mix Walkman. With a 3-inch screen, yes it’s smaller. But you get TrackID and SensMe included, and the flimsy 100MB of memory can be expanded up to 32GB with a microSD card.

The Mix Walkman also has a couple of other tricks up its sleeve in the form of the Zappin button, a search tool that plays short previews of songs and a Karaoke mode, that lowers the vocals on a song allowing you to sing over everything. Hmm...

The Mix Walkman isn’t an Android phone (it’s running Java) but Sony Ericsson’s custom UI gives you a similar look and feel. Those four corners, that give you shortcuts to the dialler, address book, messages and the music player, can’t be customised and obviously there’s no Android Market access for apps.

No price has been announced for the Live with Walkman juts yet, but the Mix Walkman can be had away on Vodafone pay-as-you-go for £80 plus a £10 top up.