Sony Ericsson has just announced two new additions to its Walkman range of phones – the Zylo and Spiro. Audiophiles will want to take note of the Sony Ericsson Zylo in particular as it supports the FLAC lossless audio format and is the first Sony Ericsson phone to do this.
This news will be music to the ears of those who hate lossy MP3s and want exact replications of their CD collection on their phones. For those not bothered about such trivialities, the Zylo also supports MP3s and WMAs as well as all the AAC variants.
Other musical aspects of the Sony Ericsson Zylo include Walkman phone mainstays such as TrackID (Sony Ericsson’s own Shazam) and PlayNow (Sony Ericsson’s own iTunes). A 3.5mm headphone jack is included and the Zylo also supports Bluetooth stereo if you want to listen to your music wirelessley. Storage-wise you only get 260MB of onboard memory, but you can whack in microSD cards of up to 16GB in size.
Other features on the Zylo include a 3.2-megapixel camera (no flash) and access to Facebook and Twitter. The Sony Ericsson Zylo is a 3G phone so access to the social networks should be fast whenever 3G is available.
The Sony Ericsson Spiro doesn’t feature the same FLAC and WMA support as the Zylo but TrackID and PlayNow are both present. The Spiro’s 5MB of memory can be expanded up to 16GB via microSD so you get the same amount of storage. Facebook and Twitter apps also come pre-installed on the Sony Ericsson Spiro, but it’s not a 3G phone so this won’t be quite as fast as on the Zylo.
Both phones are due to be released this autumn with the Sony Ericsson Zylo coming in black, silver and pink, and the Sony Ericsson Spiro coming in black, silver pink and green. There’s no word on prices yet or which of the networks will be picking these up, but we expect them to be both available free on £25 contracts.
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