SonyEricsson have announced a new walkman handset, the W850.

"The W850 is really empowering our users to listen to what they want, wherever they are," said Jan Wäreby, Corporate Executive Vice President, Head of Sales and Marketing, Sony Ericsson. "Many people now have existing music collections stored in MP3. The W850 allows users to identify and buy music in a new and spontaneous way - hearing tracks they like, identifying them with TrackID™ and downloading them to the phone."

Sony Ericsson has also evolved the Walkman® music player in ways which will appeal whether you're a new user or already familiar with the interface. The user interface is more intuitive and makes it easy to search and play tracks as well as download them. New graphics capabilities make the experience more visual and provide music metadata and album art. And the download service is integrated, so there's no need to come out of the music player and into the web browser to visit online music stores.

The new TrackID service has been developed in partnership with Gracenote, better known for their CDDB music information database.

The new phone also features a 2megapixel camera, an FM radio for when you don't feel like listening to your existing music, support for UMTS 2100 and GPRS connectivity and a 1Gb Memory Stick DUO. The handset also supports the 4Gb Memory Stick DUO, although this isn't included, allowing much more music to be stored on the phone.

The W850 will be available in 'Precious Black' or 'Golden White' when it is released later this year in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.