Sony Ericsson in the wake of CTIA has launched a pair of starter phones targeted alternately at music and photography. The W205 is billed as a first Walkman phone and lifts up Sony Ericsson's low end with more essential features: it supports music playback on Memory Stick Micro cards up to 2GB, an FM radio, a 1.3-megapixel camera and basic Bluetooth. Data is limited to GPRS but is helped by preloading Opera Mini rather than the usual and less compatible NetFront browser. It ships worldwide, including the Americas, during the summer.

The S312 is characterized as a new baseline for a camera-focused phone and has a 2-megapixel sensor, a dedicated video capture key, and light-up camera buttons. In software, it also has simple on-camera editing and an EDGE data connection for uploading smaller photos to websites. Bluetooth with stereo audio support also puts it above the W205. Sony Ericsson hopes to ship the S312 in the spring but doesn't specify an Americas-friendly version.

W205



S312