Sony Ericsson announces Text Pro and Mix Walkman phones

PHONE MAKER Sony Ericsson has used its Facebook page to announce two phones, the Text Pro and Mix Walkman.

At first look the two handsets are budget smartphones geared towards music fans or alternatively those who like to tap away on Facebook, Twitter and send text messages. Facebook was chosen for the announcement due to its "extensive fan base" according to Quentin Cordier, global product marketing manager for Sony Ericsson.

The two handsets are similar in quite a few ways. Being what we would call budget phones, they run a Sony Ericsson operating system instead of Google's Android. Both look similar, have 3.2MP cameras and have a 3in touchscreen with 240x400 resolution.

The Text Pro is the larger of the two phones with a weight of 100g and an 18mm profile. This is due to its slide-out Qwerty keyboard to facilitate mad text input. There is 64MB of RAM and 100MB of internal storage, though some of this will already be taken up.

The Mix Walkman is for music lovers and because it doesn't have a slide-out keyboard it weighs just 88g and is thinner than the Text Pro at 14.3mm. There is 64MB of RAM but more storage than the Text Pro at 256MB, which again will be partially used.

There is a karaoke feature that automatically uses equalisation to lower the vocals of any track so you can sing along, and Zappin which previews the chorus of the next track so you can decide whether to listen to the full song.

Both handsets will have WiFi and Bluetooth and you can expand the poor storage sizes using the microSD slot. We'd expect a reasonably low price for these two considering they don't have 3G or Android.

We don't think these phones will set the market on fire but either one could be a nice option for a cheap phone, maybe a present for your mum. They will be available in a range of colours, including pink, and Sony Ericsson said they will be available globally in the third quarter. µ