The S Series also has a recordable FM tuner (with 30 presets), and a Lithium Ion battery rated for 42 hours of audio, or 6.4 hours of video playback. That’s pretty decent…unless you use the built-in stereo speakers, that is. Rocking out loud will drop music listening to 17 hours, and video playback to 5 hours.

As expected, format support includes JPG photos, MP3/WMA/AAC audio and H264/MP4/WMV 30fps video.

Though the E-Series has a similar design, it ditches speakers, and the screen has been shrunk to two inches (still QVGA). It also has most of the same file format support but H.264 is noticeably absent. It does do 30fps video, though. How much will these cut backs save you? The 8GB model is $US80; the 16GB is $US100.

Both Walkmans have a variety of colour options, and support iTunes 8.1 and Windows Media player. [PR Newswire]

According to the listing, they’ll have a kickstand (pictured), built-in microphone, FM tuner (with 30 presets), and the speakers will be stereo. Format support includes MP3/WMA/AAC audio and H264/MP4/WMV 30fps video.

A very rough indication of what we might expect when the players make their way to our shores, the 8GB NWZ-S544 is listed at €129 (about $A220), and the 16GB NWZ-S545 for €149 (about $A250). [Material via Sony Insider]

I wonder if this is part of some huge marketing plan, 30 years in the making… Or just some way to make the press release a bit more interesting, combining Sony’s history with portable audio and a new Wlakman product. And even though I know that the obvious answer is the latter, my heart yearns for the former – partly because it seems somehow brilliant on Sony’s part, but mostly because otherwise, the local release of a product we read about six months ago is a little boring to write about…

The 30th anniversary wearable Walkman will set you back $119, if you’re interested.

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 cancelling, 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 cancelling 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 customisable 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—NetFone-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 $US300, with the 32GB going for $US400. 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 cancelling. If it were $US50 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 dumphone.

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, it’s emblematic of Sony’s current slide into muddled mediocrity. [Product Page]

Beautiful and responsive OLED touchscreen

Great size

Nice extra features like noise cancelling 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 analogue age gave way to the digital, and most of our favourite 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″ colour 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]

1. What was the full product name of the first Walkman?
A) Super Karate Monkey Machine
B) WM-1
C) TPS-L2
D) Excalibur

2. What is the official, Sony-approved plural form of Walkman?
A) Walkmans
B) Walkmen
C) Walkmanidae
D) Walkman personal stereos

3. In the Walkman’s first 10 years, how many different designs did Sony release?
A) 25
B) 70
C) 130
D) 170

4. What is another name that the Walkman was to have gone by?
A) Soundabout
B) Freestyle
C) Stowaway
D) Super Karate Monkey Machine

5. What was the original desired name for the Walkman?
A) Stereo Buddy
B) Music Boy
C) Stereo Walky
D) Singman

6. What was the inspiration for the Walkman?
A) Sony founder Masaru Ibuka wanted to listen to opera tapes during his long trans-Atlantic flights
B) Sony president Akio Morita wanted to listen to music while he played tennis
C) In 1978, Sony’s cassette division had lost its radio-cassette business to the radio division, and needed to impress their bosses with something new
D) All of the above

7. How many Walkman units sold in the first 10 years?
A) 1 million
B) 10 million
C) 50 million
D) 100 million

8. And how many competing Walkman clones sold?
A) 10 million
B) 50 million
C) 100 million
D) 150 million

9. Complete this sentence from a 1981 UK Daily Mirror article: “The Walkman has become the _________ of electronics.”
A) Hairpiece
B) Skateboard
C) Lucky Strike
D) Hula Hoop

10. Which all-time great wrestler/movie star does the figure in the Walkman 10th-anniversary monument (at left) resemble?
A) “Macho Man” Randy Savage
B) Andre the Giant
C) Jesse “The Body” Ventura
D) Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

1. (C) TPS-L2 – We’re not entirely sure what happened to TPS-L1, but they quickly switched to the WM naming system. [Source]

2. (D) “Walkman personal stereos,” which is totally unfair for journalists with tight word counts. “Walkmen” is a band, however, if you like bands named after your personal electronics. [Source]

3. (D) 170 different models, so basically 17 per year on average, enough to suit every man woman and child. [Source; Image Source]

4. (A) in the US (B) in Sweden (C) in the UK, but alas never (D) [Source]

5. (C) “Stereo Walky” – but, fortunately, Walky was already trademarked by Toshiba [Source]

6. (D) All of the above, and probably a handful of other apocryphal tales, too. [Source, Source; Image Source]

7. (C) 50 million [Source]

8. (D) 150 million, proving you can’t patent a general concept, no matter how slick. [Source; Image Source]

9. (B) Skateboard [Source]

10. (B) Andre the Giant—seriously, doesn’t he? [Source]

ANSWER KEY [Image Source]

Special serious thanks to Don the Intern for kicking arse all over the research end of our little Walkman 30th-anniversary party. Don’t forget to check out our gallery of the craziest Walkman models, and of course, those brilliant Walkman ads from back in the 1980s. Hat tips to Pocket Calculator’s Walkman Museum and to Tim and Nick Jarman’s Walkman Central.