Other cool features are the continuation of TrackID, mood analysis on the tracks (SensMe), image transfering, podcast loading, and Shake Control, which lets you shake your phone when you want to randomly play a track. – Jason Chen

Berlin, Germany, 14th June 2007. Less than two years since launching the first Walkman® phone, Sony Ericsson today announces a new mix of applications and services that make it easier to get music (and other media) onto your Walkman® phone, and interact with it once it's there. As well as the complete range of Walkman® phones and a whole line-up of music accessories, it's the full music experience that brings Walkman® phones alive for the consumer. "Although the range of phones and accessories is at the heart of Sony Ericsson's music offering, it's the user experience which really makes the Walkman® phone unique," says Ben Padley, Music Group Marketing Director at Sony Ericsson. "For our latest Walkman phones we have developed new applications that challenge the traditional way people explore their music, photo and video libraries. Find More Music Transfer your media between your PC and your phone with the Sony Ericsson Media Manager Access new music wherever you are with PlayNow(TM) Always know which song is playing using TrackID(TM) Listen Your Way Shake up your tracks with Shake control Feel your music with SensMe(TM) My content, my phone Getting Music onto your Walkman® phone Media Manager With the all-new Media Manager PC programme you can organise your music, photos, video clips and podcasts on your PC and transfer them to your phone. An incredibly simple tool to use, you can search and select music on your computer or audio CDs and convert the tracks to mobile-compatible formats before the transfer takes place, thus saving time as well as your phone's resources. Media Manager replaces the Disc2Phone software included with earlier Walkman® phone models and lets you do far more than just transfer music: SensMe(TM) - When music on your PC or on a CD is imported into Media Manager, it will use SensMe(TM) technology to incorporate mood analysis into the track details. So, when you transfer that music onto your phone, each song contains information on the mood of the track, which can then be used with the SensMe(TM) feature. Music Transfer - Select single tracks or a complete album from your PC music collection (or from a CD) and then click, drag and drop to transfer straight across to your Walkman(TM) phone. Media Manager will make sure it is transferred in a format that plays on your phone. Music Playlist - Use Media Manager to create a playlist of a pre-determined length of time from all of the tracks stored on your PC or phone. For example, if you know you are going to be on a train for an hour, then ask Media Manager to create a selection of songs for your journey. Imaging - Media Manager is more than managing music. Create a PC backup of favourite shots taken on your phone, freeing up your phone's memory and storing all of your pictures in one, secure place. You can also move pictures from your PC to your phone, so if you want an image from your PC as your phone's desktop, Media Manager will move it across and even re-size it to fit your phone's screen. Media Feeds - Media Manager also helps you enjoy audio and video podcasts on your phone. A podcast directory is included where you can browse through media feeds and choose which ones you want to subscribe to. Media Manager will monitor and refresh the feeds for you. You just select the episodes you want and transfer them to your phone to listen or view at your leisure. The first Sony Ericsson phones to feature Media Manager are the W910 Walkman® phone, the W960 Walkman® phone and the K850 Cyber-shot(TM) phone PlayNow(TM) version 4.0 PlayNow(TM) is a stand-alone Sony Ericsson service that sits as an easily accessible icon on the phone's desktop and offers you the chance to preview or pre-listen to a variety of media content and then buy it over-the-air if you wish. Launched in 2004, PlayNow(TM) has since evolved dramatically to add new content such as Java games and full track music downloads. Now available in over 20 countries, this latest version (PlayNow version 4.0) significantly expands the amount of content available, including more music tracks, games, ringtones (mastertones), and wallpapers. PlayNow(TM) 4.0 at a glance: Hundreds of games and the ability to browse by genre Catalogue of 000's of Sony BMG tracks to pre-listen and buy Addition of downloadable wallpapers for your phone Greater choice of ringtones (mastertones) Brand new user menu, simplifying the browse and purchase process PlayNow(TM) 4.0 requires no new software in the phone, so will be available on most Sony Ericsson phones. It will be released this June. TrackID(TM) Ever hear a song in a café, bar or restaurant that you didn't know? Or even worse, it's on the tip of your tongue but you just can't remember the title or the artist? TrackID(TM), in collaboration with Gracenote®, is an ingenious service to solve this problem forever. Using the phone's microphone, TrackID(TM) records a short clip and within seconds identifies the song, showing you the track name, artist and album, all for free.(Data charges may apply). If your phone has an inbuilt radio, TrackID(TM) even works there. Since launch in autumn 2006, over 2.5 million songs have been recognised by TrackID(TM) users on their Walkman® phones around the world. To make the experience even better, Sony Ericsson is collaborating with a number of operators, enabling consumers to directly purchase the identified song from the operator's music store. On the W910 Walkman® phone and K850 Cyber-shot(TM) phone, both announced today, TrackID(TM) is taking music discovery to the next level. Now you can: save the information about a recognized song for later for convenient retrieval. search for music by typing in an artist name, song or album title and browse through the results. You can even find a song by entering a fragment of the song's lyrics receive background information about the artist identified discover even more music, by getting recommendations for similar music based on the song identified Managing Media on your Walkman® phone Shake control Convention dictates that when listening to music, you have to press a button when you want to change the track you're listening to, or at the very least navigate to the next song on the Walkman® player. But imagine if you could switch between tracks or play games with a shake of your Walkman® phone. If you're the owner of a W580 Walkman® phone you need only to hold down the Walkman® key and give the phone a shake, regardless of whether you have the Walkman® player running at that time. Shake control will randomly play a track from your playlist, providing the perfect way to mix-up your music listening. With Shake control selected on the new W910 Walkman® phone, you can skip your music forward one track if it's flicked one way and back if it's flicked another. Shake it back and forth and it shuffles your playlist. It also adds a new dimension to mobile gaming. If you tire of using the dedicated gaming buttons, just steer the W910 from left to right to make your move. Shake control is introduced on the W580 Walkman® phone and also features on the W910 Walkman® phone SensMe(TM) Choose your music to suit your mood with SensMe(TM), a completely new way to browse and discover music on your Walkman® phone. Search your collection and create playlists based on tempo and style rather than on artist or album. The visual interface is unique as each of your tracks appears as dots in a matrix, placed along a horizontal and vertical axis according to their attributes. This way you can circle a group of tracks that match your mood to create a playlist, or simply select individual tunes as you wish. An alternative to the phone's more conventional music catalogue, SensMe(TM) is the perfect way to discover music that suits your every day living. SensMe(TM) will launch with the W910 Walkman® phone. New Media Browser The unique new media browser from Sony Ericsson places all of your media in one central area, making it easy to access music, video or podcasts from one single icon on your phone menu. Just click on the Media icon on your phone desktop and choose where you want to go. Select Pictures and then drop down to either those you have imported using Media Manager or those taken with the camera. Carry out an intelligent search to see photos by the month they were taken, view thumbnail images or scroll through in full-picture mode. If it's music you are after, it's just as intuitive. Scroll to the Walkman® player, choose the album you want by searching through album front-cover artwork or create a playlist from the tracks you have listened to the most. It is also from here that you can select a track by mood using SensMe(TM) or mix things up a bit with Shake control. The new media browser is available on the W960 Walkman® phone, W910 Walkman® phone and K850 Cyber-shot(TM) phone. © Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, 2007. The liquid identity logo, PlayNow and are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB. Sony, Walkman and the Walkman logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sony Corporation. Ericsson is the trademark or registered trademark of Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson. TrackID is powered by Gracenote Mobile MusicID. Media Manager is powered by Gracenote MusicID. Gracenote, CDDB and MusicID are trademarks or registered trademarks of Gracenote, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved. Subject to change without prior notice.

First of all, it's the hardware is much sturdier in this phone than any other Nokia I've seen in awhile. Credit goes to the steel chassis.

Even the lid stood up to a firm twist. Software and spec wise, the N76 very similar to the 2MP, Symbian 60, N75 clamshell I wrote about two months ago, so you can look for more info there. The software inside lacks the Cingular additions the N75 has. If you missed it, the keypad is very RAZR like.

The N76 isn't subsidized like the N75, so its $500 and unlocked. And it doesn't have 3G/UMTS. Other than that, I love it like I love all N Series Nokia phones. And this comes in red.

Because of the price, and the lack of 3g, I might consider the AT&T N75 to be a better deal, but you have to worry about that pesky contract. I'd go for the contract. – Brian Lam

N76 [Nokia USA]

Like its bigger brother, there are endless lists of features worth knowing about: In fact, it has most of the main features the N95 does, minus the more potent camera and GPS, and video podcasts (UPDATE: can download the app, along with the map application without GPS.) But the N75 has 3G network speeds, and a somehow snappier feeling OS. And it's subsidized at $200 after $50 rebate, with a two-year contract, so it's about a quarter the price of the N95 flagship.

Before you dive into the gallery tour below, you'll be happy to know this: Even though carriers have traditionally been pretty scared of the openness and power of the N-series Nokia phones, Cingular hasn't neutered the N75's smartphone-ness.
Here's a gallery of the hardware, screenshots, and even some sample shots taken with the camera phone.

And here's a complete rundown of what the powerful phone has to offer:

Sure, the menus are tarted up with Cingular branded stores and many of the powerful apps, like the Office doc readers, are really trial ware. But you can go ahead and install your J2ME and S60 apps, like the Google Maps, GMail, Shozu, and Opera browser we did. And you can transfer to and browse the file system over Bluetooth.

The music section, which the N95 doesn't have, is particularly interesting. There's a pay-per-month service for identifying music (á la Sony Ericsson's Free TrackID). And a link to the Yahoo Unlimited Music Store, which didn't work (despite the link on the phone, you can only sideload). UPDATE: To purchase music, you have to sideload from a PC. This is strange considering you can access the store from the phone itself. But that's so you can check out the store and mark them so that next time you're on your PC, you can mark them and DL.

Here's a list of the mountain of functions the phone has:
Main Menu
Video Download (Browser linked to Real player, UPDATED:free subscription clips, goes full screen)
Messaging (SMS, TXT)
Call Log
MEdia Net (Browser)
Mall (Buy media crap)
Music (Cingular's interesting music app menu — see below)
My Stuff (Media Gallery for images, music and vids)
Address book
Games and Apps
IM & EMail (Email: Bellsouth, AT&T, Yahoo, AOL, AIM, MSN. Chat: AIM, MSN, Yahoo, with logging)

Tools
Notes
Clock
Camera
Voice Recorder
Calendar
Web Browser
Tutorial
Flash Player
Calculator
Adobe PDF Reader
Quick Office (Trialware for office format reader)
Zip Utility
Converter
Help
About
Radio
Realplayer

Settings
Speed Dial
Voice Mail
Transfer (From one symbian phone to another)
Profiles
Config
Voice Command
3d Tones
Themes
Voice Aid
Infrared
Bluetooth
Data Cable Modes
File Manager
App Manager
Memory Manager
Connection Manager
Speech
Msg Reader
Dev. Manager
Sync

Music
Music (files, playback)
Music ID (Subscription, $4 a month)
MobiRadio (Subscription)
Shop Music (Seems useless — will go to Yahoo! Unlimited, but you have to sideload from a PC.)
Music Videos (Cingular's store)
Billboard (More Cingular's content)
Community (Cingular's)
Music Apps (store)

Games and Apps (this is where your j2me and S60 apps show up after you've installed them)
Lifeblog (uploads all your images and text to a typepad blog, over the network)
Ebay Trial (Ebay app)
Lumines
Tetris
3d Pool
MobiTV
And all the other apps I installed.

The speakers are tooth-sized, but super loud. And the camera needs a lens cover, because when it get dirty, shots end up looking terrible. But clean 2mp shots are great, if not a little grainy compared with a full digicam. Best results occur when you're using the shot mode, white balance, or flash. The video/image modes are annoying to switch between (UPDATED: Actually, there is a dedicated button to switch modes next to the shutter). And I like the sequence/time lapse mode. (See the samples in my gallery.)
UPDATE: I forgot to mention the external screen — can be used as a music player screen (using the dedicated buttons, or a viewfinder for the video and photo camera. (It's a decent 160 x 128, at 1.6 inches wide, diagonally.) You can actually control the music player and do everything but make playlists from the external controls, which are called quick cover.

Overall, good job Cingular for not messing up a good thing. I highly recommend this phone. – Brian Lam

N75 [Nokia]