Enters mylo, Sony's latest entertainment gadget

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Sony announced today a portable entertainment gadget named mylo that will be for sale next month. This is not the first time that we hear together the words Sony and mylo because five years ago it was the name of a canceled wireless Internet service for the CLIE handheld devices.

This time however Sony is offering a device and not a service (no monthly fee is required) so hopefully things should go smoother. The gadget, whose name stands for ‘my life online’, is pocket-sized (4.8 x 2.5 x 0.9 inches) and comes with a 2.4 inch color LCD. Under the display there is a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that can be used for all the text typing.

Mylo in fact is designed to be used for several text activities: instant messaging, web browsing (via the included Opera browser) and e-mailing. Sony has been able to reach an agreement with Yahoo and Google to provide their IM services and will try to bring on board other players in this field too (the first name that comes to mind is obviously AOL).

Sony was also able to partner with Skype to offer the VOIP service and for some limited time after the product launch mylo will allow free calls to Canada and the U.S. The VOIP feature and the other communication services will work in presence of a Wi-Fi network and with the growing number of areas covered this should not be a problem.

According to early reports this gadget will connect to networks using the 802.11b standard and support the WEP and the WPA encryption standards. Mylo will also make it possible to share playlists and stream songs between mylo devices using the same network.

However in case there is no connectivity available mylo can also be used as a portable audio and video player. It includes a 1GB flash memory (expandable up to 4GB) where the user can store audio, video and photo files. The supported audio formats are mp3, ATRAC and WMA (both protected and unprotected).

As for the autonomy Sony announced that mylo offers 45 hours of continuous music playback or seven hours of IM and web surfing and three hours of continuous Skype use.

Mylo will be available only in the United States and only at the Sony website or at the Sony retail stores. The announcement also included the price of the gadget so we can start to put aside the money: 350 dollars. Lastly mylo will be available in two different colors: black and white.