Sony to launch 'Touchscreen Walkman' in 2009

Sony is planning a touch screen Walkman next year, it will have Wi-Fi, OLED, WQVGA screen display and will come in 16GB and 32GB versions.

According to Sony Insider, Sony will reveal this new touch screen Walkman in the upcoming CES 2009 show.

The new Walkman has a number of features besides playing music, it will play videos, show photos and probably have browsing capabilities.

It will have Wi-Fi that allows downloading music and videos directly and will boast a touch screen with WQVGA wide screen display.

The Walkman will carry the new OLED instead of an LED screen and will have touch screen capabilities. The OLED will be able to display better color resolutions far beyond the LED screen can provide.

Sony Insider states that the new Walkman will have many of the features of the previous models but will have more features added to it because of the Wi-Fi connection. Users when playing the music will have the option to search the artist’s videos on YouTube and can play it on the screen directly.

The owners can purchase the music directly from their Walkman via Amazon.com. The Walkman will also be capable of updating audio podcasts and video feeds directly via Wi-Fi.

It will play the following formats: Audio codec support includes MP3, WMA, AAC, PCM, while video codec support is AVC (h.264), MPEG-4 and WMV.

Besides all the above features, it has FM radio, an S-Master digital amplifier built-in the device and a digital noise canceling button.

A very late entry by Sony but the new Walkman looks like a better alternative to iPods except for the iPod Touch, which has the added advantage of 1,000 applications and more in iTunes.