Tech.Wapline

Sony Ericsson today revealed the Z555a, an elegant clamshell combining a rich feature set with striking good looks.

The Z555a incorporates Sony Ericsson’s Gesture Control, letting consumers easily mute the phone or snooze its alarm without having to interrupt what they’re doing. When a call comes in, a simple movement of the hand back and forth over the phone mutes the ringtone. Similarly, sweep the hand over the phone when using it as an alarm clock to put it into ’snooze’ mode.

The Z555a’s outside display shows users who is calling even without opening the clamshell. When it’s in idle mode, the outside display remains discretely invisible.

The Z555a changes its look to fit the suit the season. The colors and designs that appear within the phone’s themes, effectively the look of the menu system and home screen, can update automatically as the year goes by. Linked to the phone’s calendar, the Z555a knows when it’s time for that summer look to give way to the fall. It even saves something special for big events.

The Z555a allows consumers to grab that spare moment in a taxi to catch up with their favorite band or even book. Store favorite music tracks or audio books on the phone and sort them by chapters, albums or artists. Tune in to FM Radio for the weather, traffic or the latest celebrity news.

The Z555a’s 1.3-megapixel camera ensures that users are always in a position to snap the action as it happens. Take a picture of a potential new purchase and send it as a picture message to a friend or upload it directly to a ‘blogsite’ so that everyone can share.

The Design Collection offers four different stylish leather bags that complement any style and protect the phone at the same time. This Collection offers creative and stylish carrying solutions that fit with the phone and style.

The Z555a is also compatible with three sleek new Bluetooth headsets. It also raises the style stakes thanks to the two changeable Style-up covers included with it.

The Z555i is an EDGE / GSM / GPRS 900 / 1800 / 1900 phone that will be available in selected markets from Q1 2008. The Z555a is an EDGE / GSM / GPRS 850 / 1800 / 1900 phone, available in the same timeframe. The Design Collection will be available in selected markets from January 2008.

Motorola today expanded its ROKR family of music products with the introduction of the ROKR E8, the new generation of ROKR products offering a complete music ecosystem.

Motorola designed the ROKR E8 to deliver an uncompromised consumer experience for music or talk. Using ModeShift technology from Motorola, the quad-band GPRS/EDGE device presents users with only the controls they need, at the time they need them, instantly transforming from music player to phone with the touch of a button.

When powered off, the surface of the ROKR E8 is smooth, with no visible keys. Power on the device and it presents a virtual numbered keypad on the front surface. With one “press” of the virtual music key, the phone keypad disappears and control keys for the music player - play, pause, fast forward and rewind - appear in its place.

Using innovative vibrating haptics technology, the device provides the tactile feedback consumers expect from a traditional keypad, providing confirmation they have pressed a virtual key.

The ROKR E8 also marks the debut of the new FastScroll navigaton wheel from Motorola, a variable-speed touch control that lets consumers easily scroll through all of the content stored on the device. With a gentle slide of the thumb, the wheel quickly scrolls through your music (music mode), contacts (phone mode), calendar (phone mode), or multimedia (imaging mode) content. Information is easily viewed on the landscape 2.0-inch QVGA display.

In music mode, the ROKR E8 delivers sound through a three-dimensional stereo feature that enhances two-channel audio and an on-board equalizer. Music can be enjoyed on the built-in speaker, with a compatible Bluetooth-enabled stereo headset, or through a wired headset plugged into the 3.5mm jack.

The ROKR E8 also helps consumers discover new music with a built-in FM radio and support for Song ID. The 2GB internal memory can store up to 1,500 songs, and the external memory is expandable up to 4GB with an optional microSD card. Music transfers quickly with USB 2.0. The device is compatible with Windows Media Player 11 on the PC, which also provides access to more than 200 online music stores.

In phone mode, the ROKR E8 provides outstanding voice quality using Motorola CrystalTalk technology. The device can receive calls while downloading or playing music, text messaging, surfing the Web or taking pictures. Quality construction and materials help make the ROKR E8 durable and reliable, and a high-gloss front, aluminum soft touch back, spun metal side keys and engraved banding offer the modern style expected from Motorola.

The ROKR E8 is expected to be available in Q1 2008.

Motorola today unveiled the Z10, a stylish kick-slider mobile film studio that captures high-quality video, edit clips, create transitions between scenes and add title slides and a soundtrack. Then, budding filmmakers can upload their creation to share with friends and family through any number of Web sites such as YouTube, Google, Yahoo! and ShoZu.

In addition to creating videos, the Z10 features great media playback capabilities. With a 2.2-inch QVGA screen that displays video at 30 frames per second in millions of colors, consumers can watch their own films or downloaded content. The external storage slot will support an external memory card with up to 32GB of capacity, when available.

One-press of the dedicated camera key launches the 3.2-megapixel camera in only 1.5 seconds. The Superfast burst mode captures up to three images a second, so consumers will never miss a frame of the action. The smart auto-focus keeps pictures sharp while intelligent auto-save automatically names and saves images directly to the on-board media gallery or favorite media-sharing Web sites.

The Z10 looks as sleek and stylish on the outside as it is feature-packed inside. The ergonomic design is built with premium quality materials, including spun stainless steel, polished metallic finish and soft-feel textures. With 3.5G HSDPA, GSM / GPRS / EDGE, and Symbian / UIQ software, the Z10 represents the next generation of mobile device technology. The Motorola Z10 is expected to be available in Q1 2008.

It might be lagging a bit behind its European cousin, but Neonode is finally committing to bringing its N2 to the States in 2008. The finger-friendly touchscreen device is the follow-on to the N1 — a phone that never even crossed the pond — and features a 2 megapixel camera, expansion via a rather unusual miniSD slot, and mere GPRS data to ferry bytes down from the network. Without 3G or even EDGE, our excitement’s tempered, but we’re still curious to find out how it feels and functions in the hand. Look for availability and carrier agreements (yep, it sounds like someone will be officially offering this — T-Mobile, perhaps?) to be announced in the second quarter.

After O2 dropped its Southeast Asian outpost at the side of the road, we weren’t terribly sure whether it’d be able to flourish — let alone survive — without the mothership’s lifeline. Turns out they’re at least giving it the old college try, though, with new models appropriately dubbed “Zinc II” and “Atom V” (notice that the “Xda” branding of old has left the building). We know this courtesy of Expansys’ Hong Kong outpost, which has done us all a favor by posting preorder pages for both devices; we only have renderings at this point, but they look pretty legit and realistic. Both devices feature quadband GSM and triband HSDPA (nice!), 256MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM, integrated FM radio, WiFi, and GPS. The Atom V is the slightly higher end of the two — despite a slightly lower price — thanks to a 3 megapixel cam around back (versus 2 for the Zinc II) and an Intel core clocked 20MHz higher than the Zinc II’s Samsung silicon, though the Zinc II should win some hearts and minds with its semi-automatic sliding QWERTY pad. If Expansys is to be believed, the Atom V will run HK$4,775 (about $612) while the Zinc II will set you back HK$5,305 (about $680) when they’re available.