Sony Eric boosts its mobile army

We’re still soaked in ticker tape from Sony Ericsson’s phone carnival yesterday, which saw the launch of the first Cybershot cam-phones.

They were far from the only stars of show; no fewer than four other mobiles made their debuts.

The Walkman household is now jam-packed with the introduction of a seventh member: the budget W300 (left).

It’s the first clamshell Walkman mobile, and is the backpacker’s hostel of the set with a basic VGA camera, Bluetooth and FM radio. The internal memory is yet to be confirmed, but it will ship with a 256MB Memory Stick Micro card.

It’s the already announced daddy of the range – the W950i – that’s really causing shockwaves at Stuff towers, though, and our brief hands-on didn’t disappoint.

Beyond the obvious draw of its show-stopping design and 4GB flash storage, there are some really nice extra touches. You can select music via thumb-nail album covers with your stylus, and the UIQ operating system is a doddle to use.

The slightly unresponsive keyboard was, we were assured, just down to a glitchy demo unit.

Camera-phones, however, were the order of the day, and Sony Eric didn’t stop with the Cybershots; a hat-trick of more affordable snappers also arrived.

Your entry-level choice is the K310 (second left), which offers a VGA camera and basic 65k colour screen, while the Z530 (far right) is basically the W300 without Walkman software.

If you’re after slightly more advanced snaps, check out the K510 (third from left) which sports a 1.3MP camera, Bluetooth, 262k display and a basic push e-mail service.

All three will be available sometime before June.