Thanks to the site, we've also learned that the 2.4-inch (QVGA) screen players have a Lithium Ion battery rated for 42 hours of audio, or 6.4 hours of video playback. And as you can see in the image above, they'll also have a kickstand.

Other key specs include a built-in microphone, FM tuner (with 30 presets), and those speakers I mentioned look to be stereo. File format support includes MP3/WMA/AAC audio and H264/MP4/WMV 30fps video. [Material via Sony Insider]

That's not to say it isn't an impressive player in its own right. It handily beats the Samsung P3 and the Cowon S9, but I'm left wondering who would pick this up instead of a Touch. But if Sony were to stick this UI into one of their Sony Ericsson Walkman musicphones, they might have something powerful indeed.

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Physical
The X-series is a very sleek player, similar in size to the Samsung P3 and significantly narrower and shorter than the iPod Touch, though ever so slightly thicker. It's designed with an unusual aesthetic: The sides of the player are this odd sort of rough, glittery metal, similar to unfinished granite, and the back and front bezel are black glass with little shiny sparkles in them, like a granite countertop. It's a nice-looking player, certainly, and it feels very solid in the hand. I just don't totally get the granite thing—it's not spectacularly eye-catching.

On the front of the X-series is the screen, an unbelievably responsive 3-inch OLED capacitive touchscreen, and a large "Home" button underneath the screen, much like the iPod Touch. The screen is crystal clear, the sharpest picture I've ever seen on a PMP—it lives up to the promise of OLED. Viewing angles are limitless, and touch response is great, without any lag at all. Unfortunately, that glass front and back are awful fingerprint magnets, though being glass, it does seem to resist scratching fairly well.

The right side hosts the noise cancellation switch and a surprisingly cheap-feeling volume rocker. The top has the headphone jack and the pleasantly firm play/pause, track forward and back buttons, while the bottom edge is home to the proprietary USB jack. Interestingly, the hold button is a giant semicircle switch on the back of the player—it seems weird, but I actually love how easy it is to reach and how solid it feels. The numerous hardware buttons make it a very nice player to control in the pocket, despite mostly being touch-based player.

The X-series is one of the only PMPs with built-in noise canceling, but it only works with the included earbuds. Fortunately, said earbuds are excellent for freebies, and the noise cancellation worked perfectly on my noisy Chinatown bus ride between Philly and New York City. Noise canceling does slaughter the battery life, though, draining it twice as fast as regular playback. When you're trying to drown out the kind of crazies who take the Chinatown bus, you'll be glad it's there.

Audio quality is a hallmark of Sony's PMP line, and the X-series does, in fact, sound great. It includes a customizable five-band equalizer for audio dorks and some nice sound enhancers like DSEE. On the other hand, you're limited to the lossy codecs Sony supports (MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM, AAC), so it may not be a good choice for serious audiophiles.

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UI
The home screen has a familiar grid of icons, including Music, Movies, Photos, Podcasts and some more intriguing Wi-Fi-based apps like Slacker, YouTube and Browser. Navigating through lists of artists, songs and albums is very similar to the iPod Touch style with a grab-and-flick interface, though a fast flick leads the list to cycle through a lot faster than the touch, almost like there's less virtual friction, and we'd say it feels just a hair less exact.

At the bottom of the Now Playing screen, there are four icons I've decided to term Back, Navigate, Web, and Options. The icons themselves aren't very literal: The Back icon is a bulleted list, and Navigate is a magnifying glass, so it's slightly confusing at first. But once you touch it, it becomes very clear what each button does, and I had no problems after that.

The "Navigate" button is great: It'll bring up a list containing Artist, Album, Songs, etc that'll let you jump right to that list without having to hit the Back button four times. The iPod Touch doesn't have anything like it, and now I wish it does. The Web button is also really cool: It brings up a screen that'll let you search the track name, artist, or album with Yahoo or YouTube. The Yahoo search brings up hits like Wikipedia and AllMusic, and the YouTube search immediately brings up a ton of music videos, live concert footage and more to watch on the player. Pretty cool stuff. Oddly, the X-series will prompt you to re-connect to a wireless signal every time you try to do one of these searches, and though it remembers your password, it's still annoying.

The X-series also includes an FM radio, and it's worth mentioning because it's one of the stronger FM tuners we've seen in a PMP. It's not like it'll change the way you think about radio, but it does as good a job as you could ask.

Web Apps
The YouTube app is really great, quite similar to that of the iPod touch or iPhone except with a classy sheer black skin to match the X-series' aesthetic. Videos load quickly and are very clear and watchable, provided you've got a solid Wi-Fi connection.

Slacker is another hit for the X-series, giving access to either the free or paid versions of the Pandora-like service with the same skin as the rest of the UI. It's super fast to load and sound quality is excellent.

Unfortunately, Sony's only two for three on the web app front, and the most exciting of its new features is a major fail: Its internet browser—NetFront-based, like PSP and Sony Ericsson—is completely unusable garbage. All text entry is done via an infuriating T9 interface (why not just rotate to a landscape QWERTY? There's plenty of room!) that's inexact and totally unhelpful. It requires you to type in "http://www." before every URL. Even if you've got the patience to sit there for ten minutes to type "http://www.gizmodo.com/", the browser can only manage those dinky mobile sites without totally freaking out. Browsing full sites is an exercise in futility, as the two zoom buttons don't always work, you can't navigate before a site has fully loaded and tapping links is inexact and frustrating. Basically, it's worthless as a web browser, which is a huge disappointment. This image pretty much sums up the X-series web browsing experience.

Desktop Software
The X-series has both a MTP (Windows-only) and a UMS (shows up as a drive, compatible with Mac and Linux as well), though UMS must be switched on before each connection. That means it'll work with most any media player, save iTunes. Sony's "Media Manager" software is included, but it's pretty awful, very archaic and difficult to use, and won't convert video unless you pay for the "Pro" upgrade. That last part is a real killer for the X-series' video capabilities.

Speaking of video conversion, you'll be doing a lot of it, since the X-series only supports a few video codecs and none of the common pirate formats (Matroska, XviD) are included, unlike the pirate-friendly Samsung P3. I used Cucusoft and was able to get a few MPEG-4 videos onto the player, but your average user will definitely have trouble figuring it out. None of the WMVs I tried would work, and I never was able to get a great-quality video on to test out what the OLED screen can really do. iSquint for Mac does work, but the quality, while totally watchable, is disappointing: On an OLED screen like this, you want to be blown away by video quality, and I wasn't.

Audio codec support is disappointing too, considering the X-series' stellar audio performance: The only lossless format is WAV, which nobody will use due to its massive file size. Besides the preferred lossless formats, more niche codecs like OGG aren't supported either. The player has incredible capabilities, yet Sony cripples it by limiting its compatibility—they could have courted the audiophile market, but 320kbps mp3 files can only sound so good.

Price and Conclusion
The X-series, according to Sony, is a premium gadget and thus commands premium prices—coincidentally the same prices as the iPod Touch. The 16GB version costs $300, with the 32GB going for $400. The difference is that the iPod Touch comes with a massive App Store for boatloads of new features, not to mention an accelerometer, a web browser that won't make you long for the days of WAP, tons of accessories, and software that actually works. The X-series just can't compete with that.

The X-series is a really solid player: The form factor is nice, the screen is incredible, sound and video quality are as high as these things get, and it comes with built-in noise canceling. If it were $50 cheaper, I'd have no hesitation about recommending it over the Samsung P3 and Cowon S9, but if you're spending at that level, you'd be buying the wrong machine if you chose the Sony.

On the other hand, we do see a successful future if Sony put a phone version of this up against Nokia's XpressMusic. It could never be a smartphone, not in this shape, but it could be a great music-based dumbphone.

Sony understands that PMPs can't just be PMPs anymore: basic iPods aren't selling like they used to, and the Touch is part of a mobile computing platform. But to just stuff in some Wi-Fi features without thinking about software expandability or even a usable browser—that's not going to cut it these days. Sadly, despite all the things the X-series does right, and its impressive stats list, it's just not enough in a day and age owned by networked and app-friendly gear. [Product Page]

Beautiful and responsive OLED touchscreen

Great size

Nice extra features like noise canceling and YouTube

Excellent sound quality

UI is sometimes unclear, but has more options than iPod Touch

Battery life is above average but not thrilling

Web browser is complete garbage

Frustrating T9 text entry system

Limited audio and video codec support, and video conversion is a pain

Too expensive

Beyond that, there are no details on the device, although images seem to indicate a more compact design and/or a bigger screen. There also appears to be speakers located on the face of the player—which would be a welcome addition for anyone who wants to go without headphones now and then. If this is the real deal, don't expect it to hit store shelves anytime soon. Sony Insider claims that it isn't set to arrive "for a while." [Sony Insider]

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Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

If OLED is too rich for your blood, the E-Series comes with the following features:

WALKMAN® E Series Video MP3 players
• Slim, light Digital Media Player in choice of Black or Red
• Clear Stereo and Clear Bass technologies for superb sound quality
• High resolution QVGA 2" Color LCD screen
• Support for video file format conversion (If users have decoder software, other video formats can be converted)
• Long battery life up to 30 hrs (Music : MP3 128kbps) audio / 6 hrs (Video : MPEG-4 Simple Profile 384kbps) video

The B-Series, a compact model for more active lifestyles", has the following features:

• Small, Ultra-light player in choice of four colors
• Easy operation with drag-and-drop file transfers
• ZAPPIN™ for quick, easy song searches
• Bass button for powerful low frequency enhancement
• 18 hr music playback and Quick Charge battery
• FM tuner with recording facility

Both are touted as entry level, so the assumption is that these models should be fairly affordable, but there are no specifics on or availability in the States just yet. [Sony Europe and CrunchGear]

Both leaks are missing any kind of release information, so we don't even know if they'll actually be coming to market. But just in case, the "Twiggy," pictured above, looks like the winner of the two, with a big old touch-sensitive play/pause button on its front and a 3.2MP camera.

The "Bao" sports a diamond design sort of reminiscent of the Nokia Prism series but with hardly anything else to distinguish it. We were hoping the Android "Rachael" might mean Sony's gotten a little more ambitious with its phones, but these don't inspire much excitement. [Boy Genius Report and Softpedia]

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The original TPS-L2 Walkman went on sale 30 years ago today, July 1st 1979, in Japan. It played stereo and had dual mini headphone jacks for sharing audio with a friend. There was a mic, but it was not used for recording, but to output your voice to your buddy's headset so he could hear you over the music. The press received it in a lukewarm fashion, but the device took off thanks to celebrity product placement.

The 1981 WM-2 is the first attempt at making a Walkman so small, its only slightly bigger than the tape.

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The first Sony Sport walkman was quite waterproof, with jack plug and gaskets around the buttons and tape hold. From 1984. They offered special edition models for locations like Hawaii and Okinana Beach.

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The WM-F2 came out in 1982 and was the first Walkman to include both playback, recording and an FM tuner.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The WM-DD was the first personal model to move from a belt driven motor to a "disc drive" reducing wow and flutter and greatly improving the quality of sound reproduction. It also had a metal case.

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The WM-F107 was solar charged, but would not support playback as the power to run the tape was more demand than the now ancient back mounted panel could keep up with. It handled FM fine, however, off the stream of electrons. 1987.

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The WM-10 expanded on the tiny WM-2's small form factor, and is considered by the experts at Walkman Central to remain a fine example of reduction engineering. For example: the single AA battery was not actually powerful enough to turn the motors, so they used a step up converter to power the tape drive. 1983.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The 1983 Walkman Music Shuttle was a Walkman that docked into a car stereo. Wow that guy is super stoked to be listening to the same song he was just driving to!

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.1985: The WM-W800 is a Walkman with TWO tape decks. One for playback, one for recording, which made dubbing tapes ridiculously easy. More photos at Walkman Central.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The WM-3000 from 1990 is one of the earliest My First Sony products designed for kids. They took a basic walkman, and made sure the edges weren't sharp, the batteries couldn't be easily popped out of the back and swallowed and the volume limiter ensured baby eardrums didn't pop under duress of mother goose tapes.

The WM-GX202 is one of the last tape playing Walkmen and guess what? They're still being sold in Japan in 2009! The product's focus is not on music, but on language learning tapes.

To the kid's credit, he was able to deduce that the tape had two sides (took him three days) and that you could switch between two kinds of tapes fairly easily. He was also given weird looks on the street and allowed to listen to music in class because of his teachers' nostalgia. Other choice quotes:

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is "shuffle", where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don't have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, "Walkmans eat tapes". So my clumsy clicking could have ended up ruining my favourite tape, leaving me music-less for the rest of the day.

Another useful feature is the power socket on the side, so that you can plug the Walkman into the wall when you're not on the move. But given the dreadful battery life, I guess this was an outright necessity rather than an extra function.

But in the end, which did he like better: his Walkman or his iPod? The iPod, of course, except for the fact that the Walkman had two headphone ports for easy music sharing. [BBC via Engadget]

The reports comes from Impress Watch, who says the company is working on an Android PMP, and possibly satnav, but offers few details beyond that. They sound fairly confident, describing Sony's interest in Android for non-phone devices as an "open secret."

The possibility is compelling: Android is free, customizable, and already has media playing capabilities built in. It's suited to touchscreens, and has a fantastic web browser. Most importantly, it's got a decent app store—a feature that has propelled Apple's iPod Touch miles ahead from its competition over the past year. For now, though, it's not clear how much of this report is based on actual inside information, and how much is based on some analyst's theory that if he just keeps saying Sony will make intelligent decisions, they eventually will. [Impress Watch]

The Sony Ericsson W995a comes with Google Maps built-in to show to you where you are—using 3G triangulation, not GPS—and automatically adds your location to your photos.

As a Walkman player it uses dedicated physical playback buttons, supporting all the standard audio formats and including a built-in FM radio with presets. It also has Clear Stereo and Clear Bass technology, which Sony says enhances the audio quality, avoiding "channel leakage" and "bass distortion".

The Sony Ericsson W995a also comes with Media Go software, the newly announced media software that will allow you to access show and movies, as well as transcode video and music files optimized for the W995a hardware features.

UPDATE: Sony has released more details, adding content partners (Slacker radio!), elaboration on noise cancellation, and gestures like "scene scroll" for better movie watching.

The pricing had previously been predicted through amusingly earnest imaginary currency conversion, but now it's Amazon official—and press-release official, too:

SONY UNVEILS THE X-SERIES WALKMAN®, DELIVERING AN UNRIVALED PORTABLE AUDIO/VIDEO EXPERIENCE

SAN DIEGO, May 13, 2009 –Sony today took the wraps off its top-of-the-line Walkman® Video MP3 player – the X-series Walkman®. A premium portable entertainment device, the X-series (NWZ-X1000 models) is Wi-Fi enabled and features an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) touch screen, Sony's Digital Clear Audio Technologies, as well as embedded content provided by Slacker® Radio and YouTube™.

"The new X-series leverages Sony's engineering heritage and integrates the latest advances in OLED and other innovative technologies," said Andrew Sivori, director of the audio products business at Sony Electronics. "We focused on enhancing audio and video playback to develop a device that allows consumers a deeper, more interactive way to enjoy content, as well as discover new content, for a truly unique entertainment experience."

Picture Perfect

Featuring a 3-inch OLED touch screen, the player delivers outstanding video with exceptional color reproduction, extremely high contrast and a rapid response rate.
With a 180-degree viewing angle, the next generation display allows for amazing video playback and photo viewing. Additionally, when watching movies on the device, the image on the screen can be adjusted based on the user's preference, while navigation has been simplified via a feature called scene scroll. Utilizing the scene scroll feature, users select their preferred time increment and simply swipe across the screen to scroll forward and backward through scenes.

Silence is Golden

Sony's X-series Walkman® is the industry's first* video MP3 player to offer integrated digital noise canceling technology. The new model uses a unique, built-in digital noise canceling (DNC) software engine to block out ambient noise, while providing a high-quality audio experience.
The accompanying 13.5mm EX headphones house a small microphone to measure intrusive noise so the DNC filter can create an optimal inverted sound wave that reduces up to 98.0 percent of the noise. Sony's DNC software engine makes it possible for the digital noise canceling technology to work in all environments, but custom settings can be selected to enhance the experience. Users can select airplane, bus/train or office modes which use different filters in the digital signal processor specifically tuned for these surroundings.
As an added benefit, users can turn on the noise canceling feature for peace and quiet even without listening to music. On airplanes, travelers can also connect the X-series player directly to a plane's audio / video system with the included accessory cable, and enjoy regular in-flight entertainment with the bonus of digital noise cancellation.

Content Matters

The X-series Walkman® broadens options for enjoying content from multiple sources, including many download stores, the FM tuner, personal collections and embedded services like Slacker® Radio. Using Slacker, music lovers select up to three stations and hundreds of songs will get pushed to the device at no charge. When the stations are refreshed in a Wi-Fi area, the content is buffered and cached on the Walkman player so those tunes can be enjoyed anywhere and everywhere. Slacker also features rich metadata allowing users to access artist info while listening to a song and customize channels with "favorite" and "ban" buttons for the service to suggest content.
Support for popular audio and video codecs is enhanced because the X-series Walkman® devices play protected Windows Media Video (WMV) files, and supports other video codecs such as AVC Baseline (H.264) and MPEG-4, allowing you to enjoy movies and video clips from your other media collections as well as paid music services. It also comes with Content Transfer software which simplifies "drag and drop" transfer of non-DRM music, videos, podcasts and playlists from online music services such as iTunes™ to Walkman® players.
The battery life is up to 33 hours of music playback and up to 9 hours of video playback.

Direct Connect

Marking Sony's first Walkman® product with Wi-Fi integration, the X-series Walkman Video MP3 player is a smart device for consumers who want to stay connected at all times. Utilizing built-in Wi-Fi technology, the X-series Walkman Video MP3 players let you access an Internet web browser, subscribe to and refresh podcasts, and search for and playback content on YouTube™, all without using your PC. In addition, a "Related Links" function found when playing your favorite songs allows for quick searches of complementary content via YouTube™ using metadata associated with the song.

Signature Functionality

The device utilizes a hybrid interface with both touch panel operation and a hard key system to improve upon the navigation experience. Select buttons like volume, play/pause, rewind/fast forward, lock and noise canceling enhance usability when the device is in a backpack, purse or pocket for quick operation without looking at the display.

Pricing and Availability

The X-series Walkman® video MP3 player is available now for pre-sales on sonystyle.com. The device will come in black in two different storage capacities, the NWZ-X1051 with 16GB of internal storage and the NWZ- X1061 with 32GB, and cost $299 and $399 respectively. Both models can be found in Sony Style stores and select retailers nationwide mid-June.

*Based on Sony's survey (as of Apr. 2009)

WALKMAN is a registered trademark of Sony Corporation.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

YouTube is a trademark of Google, Inc.

Slacker is a registered trademark of Slacker, Inc.

iTunes is a trademark of Apple Inc. registered in the U.S. and other countries.

On Sony's "SonyRewards" site, the X1000-series unexpectedly popped up with a price, albeit in Sony's "points" currency. But if we convert from Sony points to, you know, actual money, the X1000 will come in at $299 and $399 for the 16GB/32GB versions, respectively. That's exactly the same as Apple's price on its equivalent iPod touch models.

The X1000-series includes a lot of features the iPod touch doesn't, like the all-important OLED screen, noise-cancelling technology, an FM tuner, and Sony's vaunted sound quality, but the iPod touch has been an established smash hit for years now and we wish Sony would have undercut to make more of a splash. This is just a rumor, at the moment, but an appearance on an official Sony site is pretty solid evidence that these will be the final prices. [Sony Rewards (16GB, 32GB) via Engadget]

This 1988 WM-505 (which may not even have made it to the US) was dug up by retrothing, and comes both with wireless headphone ability and a rechargeable (?) proprietary Sony slim battery. The whole thing is pretty damn small for a Walkman from 1988, and is impressive for both its early wireless-ness, and for the engineering acumen needed to make something so compact. [Retro thing via Crunchgear]

Listening Test: It's music tech week at Gizmodo.

It's got 32GB of storage, uses the same NetFront browser as the PSP, plays all of the major audio (MP3, AAC, WMA, not OGG) and video (AVC, H.264, MPEG4, WMV) formats, and its built-in digital noise canceling has a noise suppression ratio of 17dB. Oh yeah, Windows only.

It looks like Sony gets a lot of little things right, which bodes well, since it's the little thing that are usually Sony's undoing. Check out the full spec splooge here: [Sony Style]

Of course, these specimens aren't really fossils. They're concrete mostly, with cool Latin names, made from molds and with a technique that mimics true fossils. Artist Christopher Locke has also created neat little backstories for each fossil, like this one for the once proud and powerful Ambulephebus sonysymphonia (that's Walkman to we laypeople):

Ambulephebus sonysymphonia is first found in the late 1970s, and is often found in close proximity to Asportatio acroamatis, suggesting a possible symbiotic relationship. This species rapidly evolved into many other forms, including a large round version (Ambulephebus discus) and the rare Ambulephebus minidiscus.

It is theorized that the entire genus of Ambulephebus was virtually wiped out by the sudden appearance of Egosiliqua Malusymphonicus near the turn of the century. Some Ambulephebus remain, but not in the numbers once seen.

As you can probably guess, that dastardly Egosiliqua Malusymphonicus, the bane of the Walkman's existence, is better known as the iPod.

Other "modern fossils" include the aforementioned controller, a Game Boy, NES controllers (they died side-by-side, *sigh*), a rotary telephone, and a hard drive. [Christopher Locke via Neatorama]

The 16-gigabyte NWZ-X1050B will cost £214 (~$300) and 32-gigabyte NWZ-X1060B will cost £283 (~$400). Looking forward to the X1000 making a stateside appearance sometime soon. [Amazon UK via OLED-Display via Engadget]