Sony hasn’t had the best of times over the last year. The company has been plagued by hacking and monetary woes that ran into the billions. At one stage recently, their shares were at their lowest level since 1980.

So, it’s hardly surprising the marketing budget has been small for the new Walkman, which is an iPod, dressed like a futuristic hipster.

The old school..

There will be three 7mm thin models, and new flagship series players that run on Google Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich. Two will have Bluetooth technology for wireless connection to headphones or speaker docks, and there’s one that benefits from noise-canceling circuitry. Of course there is Wi-Fi too.

Gizmag reports on the new Walkman’s stats:

The new flagship F800 Series players come in 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB models and are all powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 dual-core processor and run on Android 4.0 (ICS), which means a host of pre-installed apps including email, maps and media gallery and full access to Google Play. There’s built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a 3.5-inch multi-touch LCD display and they can handle MP3, (non-DRM) WMA and AAC-LC, HE-AAC, Linear PCM and FLAC audio files (sadly no OGG showing) and MPEG4, AVC (H.264/AVC), and (non-DRM) WMV9 video files.

Not bad.

All of the new models are compatible with Sony’s E473K portable speaker dock as well as its Music Unlimited subscription service.

Battery life looks good – 25 hours of audio, or 4,5 hours of video playback, and about four hours of recharging time for the F800 Series.

Remarkably the smaller 7mm models are claiming up to 36 hours of audio or six hours of video playback between charges.

The full range will be available in Europe soon, and in the States later in August. The 16-GB F800 Series will retail for US$269,99, the 32 GB will cost $299,99. And the lower-end E474 will come in at $89,99.

[Source: Gizmag]