By Chris Nicholls

BARCELONA, SPAIN: Sony Ericsson has announced its first 3-inch VGA touchscreen Windows mobile phone, as well as a new Walkman phone and two Cybershot models, ahead of the Mobile World Conference (formerly 3GSM) in Barcelona, Spain.

The Experia X1 is Sony Ericsson’s first use of Windows Mobile, and features a 3-inch widescreen VGA touchscreen with a full QWERTY keyboard underneath. It also has a three megapixel camera, HSDPA, as well as HSUPA and allows handwriting recognition.

The new Walkman-branded clamshell phone, the W980, has eight gigabytes of onboard memory, and all its music controls on the outer face of the clamshell. It also comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera, but will not have HSDPA internet access. This is despite other Walkman models having come with the feature in the past.

Sony Ericsson also released two more touchscreen models, the G700 and G900 ‘organiser’ phones. Both have a touchscreen mounted above a numerical keypad, which allows the user to handwrite notes and ‘paste’ them directly as Post-it-style reminders to the phone’s home screen.

The G700 comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera, while the G900 has a five megapixel camera. 

While all bar one of Sony Ericsson’s new phones came with a minimum 3 megapixel camera, the company also released two Cybershot-branded phones, the C702 and C902, with the ‘C’ letter replacing the ‘K’ used so far on their camera-centric phones. The C702 is ‘splash-proof and dustproof’ and comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera with supposed ‘one-handed operation.’ It also features GPS and comes standard with Google Maps.

The C902 has a five megapixel camera with the first use of face detection software by the company. However, it forgoes the xenon flash used in current models to revert back to an LED light.

Finally, Sony Ericsson also debuted a new clamshell ‘Z’ series, phone, the Z770i, which features a pan/zoom ability in its browser to enable easier internet navigation, as well as a ‘mouse’ pointer. It comes with a two megapixel camera and HSDPA internet access.

A spokesperson for Sony Ericsson in Australia said the phones should be sold in Australia from either late Q2 or from Q3 this year. However, while many of the new phones were already listed on Sony Ericsson’s Australian homepage as of today, the C902, Z770i and G900 were not listed.