It's been announced and reviewed, but we still had to wrap our sweaty paws all over the Walkman W880 while at 3GSM. It's fit and trim, no doubt, but you know us, we're already looking forward to whatever comes next.

Sony Ericsson's venerable Walkman line just received a good dose of cool with the announcement and (pending?) release of the W880. Sony Ericsson has joined the thin-is-in crowd with this one, as the W880 comes in at a skinny and svelte 9.4mm thick -- pretty dainty for a candybar unit. This is one of the newest Sony Ericsson handsets we've been pleased to view and gawk at. Slim, trim, and comes in fightin' with such features like 2 cams (a VGA one for front-facing video calls), Bluetooth 2.0 A2DP and Memory Stick M2 support (alas, Sony's proprietary format) and...we'll say it again -- an ultra-slim shape that's more Samsung-ian than from the SE boys. A few things that stood out in the GSM Arena review was the inclusion of "multitasking" support (we can guess at the meaning there), EDGE being absent and the inclusion of a standard 3.5mm audio adapter for using your own high-end headphones with the W880. We wish all handset makers would do this -- since using those sweet Shure earphones are, well, worth it. GSM Arena's verdict with the in-depth review? This is one sweet candybar.

[Thanks, Simon]

Just like we thought, Sony Ericsson officially launched their W880 (Ai) Walkman musicphone today. Good thing too, 'cause all the leaked photos and SE teasers were getting a bit tiresome. So was the wait worth it? Depends, do you like slim musicphones swaddled in brushed stainless steel? At just 9.4-millimeters thin, it's SE's slimmest Walkman phone yet and packs a 1.8" QVGA 262k TFT display and 2 megapixel camera with a 1GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) card included in the box. It also comes pre-loaded with Walkman Player 2.0, Disc2Phone music management, and the TrackID music recognition applications. It also features a Flight Mode for use on the airplane and battery capable of up to 20-hours of music playback or up to 6 hours 30 mins of talk time. Good so far right? Sadly for those of us in The States, it'll only be sportin' UMTS 2100 and GSM 900/1800/1900 when it hits Europe in Q1. A GSM-only variant dubbed the W888 is headed to China. Check the gallery below for a taste of what might have been.

Oh yes it is. That's the Sony Ericsson W880 "Ai" Walkman up there comin' atcha straight out of Sweden. We still don't know if the tri-band GSM / UMTS and QVGA specs are the real deal or not. But that's definitely a 2 megapixel camera on the back. Now, according to Swedish site NYA!mobil.se (via a bit of janky machine translation), the Walkman W880 will apparently join the living on Tuesday, 6 February -- in Sweden anyway, home country of the Ericsson half of that SE equation. At this point, that date seems fair enough. Besides, they've managed to get their hands on the device so they must know a little something, eh? More pics including a peep at the user interface after the break.

[Thanks, David]

It ain't exactly the full disclosure we were hoping for, but hey, baby steps... Sony Ericsson's at least admitting the W880 "Ai" exists now, and that counts for something, right? The press release couldn't possible be more sparse, simply stating that the handset "will blend astonishing good looks with all of the music-centred features that fans have come to expect" from Walkman phones and more details will be provided closer to release in the first half of '07. And, oh yeah, there are a couple teaser shots that manage to be even less revealing than the plethora of spy shots we've already scored; at least they're kinda artsy.

[Thanks, Mike]

Despite an unusually heavy flow of scoops recently, Sony Ericsson may yet (involuntarily) have at least one more rumor / surprise up its sleeves before the year's out. Remember that hot lil' W42S announced for KDDI's au network earlier this year? You know, the one with the trick knurled metal navigation knob on its bottom? Well, MobilMania noticed that the phone has popped up recently on T-Mobile's Czech site, bearing the "W880" label. No phone bearing a W880 designation has been officially announced by Sony Ericsson, meaning T-Mobile appears to have let the cat out of the bag just a little early (thanks, folks!). For the record, KDDI au is a CDMA network, meaning that the W880 would've had to undergo a metamorphosis into a GSM piece; but hey, as long as it's quad-band, we're just fine with that.

[Via GSMArena, thanks Maximus]