Sony announces Mylo

SONY HAS RELEASED details of a Wi Fi-enabled personal communications device called Mylo. The product competes with a range of gadgets already on the market, including the Sidekick from Danger, and the Nokia 770 wireless Internet mini-tablet.

The Mylo has 1GB of built-in flash memory, and comes with a Memory Stick Pro Duo slot for further injections of storage of up to 4GB - Sony is introducing a 4GB Memory Stick this month for $170, a spokeswoman said. It has a 320 by 240 pixel 2.4-inch LCD screen, and it should retail for $350 when it hits retail in September.

Available in black or white, Mylo comes embedded with three free instant messaging services: Skype, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk. An built-in qwerty keyboard enables rapid typing for all your IM needs. It also comes with an embedded Opera browser.

It supports playing digital music files in MP3, ATRAC or WMA format. It can wirelessly stream music to other mylo owners in the area, similar to functionality that has been quoted for the new Microsoft Zune. The device allegedly offers 45 hours of music playback, around seven hours of instant-message chatting/web surfing and more than three hours of continuous Skype telephone call time.

Sony is borrowing the name Mylo from a prior, ill-fated generation of its handheld devices it had planned to launch in the US on September the 11th, 2001, but subsequently cancelled. That bodes well then. µ

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Gizmondo YouTube Video
Sony Mylo site