It’s been a long time coming for Sony but now it may be official enough. Sony is set to unveil a new Walkman this coming CES 2009. The device will be completely touchscreen and will go head to head with the Apple iPod Touch.
This will be the most advanced music, video and photo Walkman music player ever released by Sony to date. According to Wired, the new Walkman will feature WiFi, which allows the device to hook on to the internet and show videos from Youtube, Crackle, etc, the same way the iPod Touch does.
There has been no announcement yet on whether the device will have an internet browser and surf the net. Still, as a music player the Walkman will have Audio codec support for MP3, WMA, AAC, PCM, while video codec support is AVC (h.264), MPEG-4 and WMV. That’s a couple more better than the iPod.
Details are still scarce and probably will be revealed completely at CES 2009. Nonetheless, here’s what it should have to beat the iPod:
- file drag and drop capabilities (no more ridiculous software iTunes)
- productivity and office tools (open office?)
- application store
- AVI support
- multitouch
However, knowing that it is a Sony, they’ll probably use their own version of iTunes and AppStore. And probably the worst part of being a Sony, it will cost too much.
