Sony Mylo Communicator - 2.0
The first Sony Mylo Communicator was interesting, but for most people it just didn't deliver the goods. Sony went back to the drawing board and came up with a smarter design and more functionality on the new Sony Mylo 2, which will be available this month for about $300. The pocketable broadband device is available in black or white, with a back-lit, slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Like the previous Mylo, this one connects to open Wi-Fi networks using 802.11/b and /g standards, and Sony says that owners will receive free access to participating Wayport hotspot locations in the U.S. including more than 9,000 McDonald’s locations until Dec. 31, 2010. To help find a Wi-Fi connection, the unit includes a hotspot location database from JiWire for the top 20 U.S. cities. Still, I would have liked to see this device have HSDPA connectivity as well.
The new Sony Mylo Communicator comes with Adobe Flash Lite 3 software, so you can watch YouTube videos and browse other Flash-based Web sites, and you can upload and download content to and from the Web using the touch screen interface on its 3.5-inch high-resolution display. It also has a 1.3 mega pixel camera and photo editing software which lets you resize photos, write captions or draw on photos and post them to most social networking pages or blogs when connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot.
You can also log into existing AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, and make Skype Voip calls with this baby. Plus, Sony has added five Widgets to the device, including he Google Search Widget, a MyContacts Widget, a YouTube, an RSS Widget, and the Facebook Notifier that should be popular with users as they keep up with elements of their Facebook page.
There's 1GB of internal memory, with support for up to 8GB of additional storage with Memory Stick Duo media for storing flash games, digital music files, video files,image files or news summaries downloaded from the Internet, or imported from your computer or digital camera. Windows Media DRM 10, MP3, AAC, ATRAC® or WMA (secure and unsecured) music files are supported, and you can watch MPEG4 simple profile and MPEG4/AVC baseline profile video transferred to the mylo communicator via USB from a PC or downloaded from the Web.
It comes with a microphone, stereo headphones, USB cable, a stylus and a neoprene case. Attachable face plates are available in red with gold or blue with pewter, each pair selling for about $20. An optional charging cradle is available for around $30.
