If the future of consumer devices is convergence then take a look at what SonyEricsson is doing as a guide to what the future will look like. Let’s start by saying you’ll want to have lots of memory handy because we are at a point today where you can generate a tremendous amount of megabytes from the camera on one of these babies.

The Sony Ericsson W800 which comes in variants for GSM – W800i and for GSM in China – W800c will be some of the most powerful devices out there and most interestingly they hark back to the heritage of the Sony Walkman. Sony is positioning this device a s serious music player. It plays 15 hours of music while the phone is on or 30 hours when the phone is off. If you charge the phone every night you can actually listen to music all day, every day. This is an incredible accomplishment. I am not sure why the iPOD Shuffle will be needed when phones like this become commonplace. This explains of course why the iPOD will soon become a phone as well.

The W800 weighs only 3 1/2 ounces and they still found a way to integrate a 2 Megapixel camera! The camera also functions as a video recorder. The phone comes with a 500k Memory Stick Duo card. BTW, I hate the memory stick duo card because it is not as economical (read cheap) as the SD format and the capacity is always behind SD by an order of magnitude. Still I purchased a Sony Camera that uses this format and just purchased a Sony Video recorder this past weekend that uses the same format. Yes Sony, I view your products with mixed emotions. Speaking of mixed emotion, someone once told me the definition of mixed emotion is watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new Mercedes. That’s one definition that won’t make my VoIP Dictionary! Seriously. Sony makes great products and as such they are worthy of purchasing… Even if they lock you into proprietary technologies. I look at it this way… If I can by a superior A/V product the extra memory cost is what the company spends on R&D. In other words Sony still makes money on the backend while their competitors don’t.

With the included memory card you can store 150 music tracks which is very impressive. Perhaps ou don’t even need another memory card. Oh and by the way, you get a pair of headphones with the package as well. Expect the camera in Q3 of 2005 and no price has been determined.