Walkman phone goes for gold

The Walkman family will have to start looking for a bigger house soon – they’ve just been blessed an eighth member, a gold chap who keeps telling us to always believe in our soul.

We thought the orange-and-cream W800i had something of the ladyphone about it, but the new W700i would look equally at home in a handbag with its soft ‘titanium gold’ finish.

Apart from the re-spray, it’s identical to the original – this means a 2MP camera, top FM radio, Bluetooth and up to 30 hours music playing from the Walkman mode, which you can listen to with the phone turned off.

You also get a generous 256MB Memory Stick Pro Duo in the bundle to load up with MP3s and AACs, and Sony Ericsson’s fine, sound isolator-style headphones. A standard adaptor is also included if you simply can’t bear to part with your Sennheisers.

The W700i follows the introduction of a new budget model, the clamshell W300, and our favourite, the 4GB flash-drive equipped W950 smartphone.

The original’s combination of a K750i’s functionality and the Walkman interface still makes it the set-text for music phones, which is good news for this new clone’s career aspirations.

It’ll be available sometime before July for an as yet unknown price. Go to Sony Ericsson’s site for more info and shots.