Last month, it would have been accurate to declare the Walkman line of mobile phones from Sony Ericsson as dead and another artifact in the dustbins of mobile phone history. But just this month, the struggling Japanese-Swedish mobile phone maker just announced it is reviving the Walkman line with two new non-smartphone handsets pitched to a wider low to mid markets.

One of them is the Sony Ericsson Zylo Walkman. It looks like under the new Sony Ericsson branding strategy, it loses the “W” branding that is dead and gone. This time, you have the full Walkman name suffixed to the handset brand indicating its lineage to the Walkman tradition of mobile music listening harking back to the days of the cassette.

The Zylo is the latest addition to the more than 130 million Walkman handsets released since its launch in 2005.

Stand Out Features

The Zylo could have stood out as one of the best music phones on the market if not for one oversight that sticks out like a dirty finger to the Walkman tradition. It has a stereo FM radio with RDS and the latest Walkman Player edition that can play lossless compressed FLAC file formats to make it a high fidelity music phone.

Unfortunately, some nitwit at Sony Ericsson forgot to put in the music industry standard 3.5mm headphone jack which won’t let audiophiles use their high fidelity headphone sets. You’re left at the mercy of some proprietary Sony earphone that is simply no match to those esteemed high fidelity headsets terminated with 3.5mm plugs.

The Sony Ericsson Zylo therefore cannot merit a serious audiophile status for this one oversight. We’d like to think it’s an oversight because if it was deliberate, then we can understand why Sony Ericsson is in its dire straits today.

Good thing the young crowds to whom the Zylo is pitched can get by with these mediocre earphones or those with A2DP profile support for wireless stereo listening. SNS is more the focus here as it allows you to get in touch with your social networking friends online without taking leave of your listening enjoyment.

Mid-Tier Phone Features

Measuring 103 x 52 x 11.5 mm and weighs a light 115g, the slider Zylo sports a stylish design that is sure to appeal to the young and will come this summer in three body colors – jazz black, chacha silver and swing pink. It gets 3G network coverage from its dual band UMTS (900/ 2100) radio and a 2G quad band GSM (850/ 900/ 1800/ 1900).

2G data connectivity gets Class 10 GPRS/EDGE for data speeds of up to 236.8 Kbps while 3G data connectivity gets HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA at 2.0 Mbps. Typical of mid-tier handsets, there’s no GPS or WiFi, but local data transfers and syncing get high speed Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0.

Imaging on the Sony Ericsson Zylo is average with a 3.2 megapixel shooter with geo tagging, video recording and videocall support, but no autofocus or LED flash typical of affordable handsets. It sports an average 2.6-inch TFT LCD display with mere QVGA resolution and 256k color depth but comes with a scratch resistant surface and an accelerometer for auto rotate viewing.

Internal memory gets a decent 260 MB with microSD memory expandability for up to 16 GB. Talk time is limited to just 4 hours with 340 hours of standby time on its Li-Ion battery when fully charged. Find fantastic Sony Ericsson Zylo deals at Moby1 when you compare the latest mobile deals including mobile phone free gift deals.