Sony Ericsson today announced a new addition to its Walkman phone family - the W550 - offers stereo music and integrates a 1.3 megapixel camera, full Internet browsing capability and a credible games console.

The W550 has an advanced digital music player with excellent sound quality delivered through two external high quality stereo speakers or through quality stereo headphones provided with the phone. Loading music onto the handset is simple thanks to intuitive Disc2Phone PC software and the phones 256MB internal memory, enough for storing between 60 and 120 standard MP3 or AAC music tracks (depending on the bit rate). The W550 is the ideal new addition to the Sony Ericsson Walkman family with its stylish design and easy to use functionality. The phone is durable and offers great battery life, allowing users to listen to up to 30 hours of music.

Equipped with a 1.3 MegaPixel camera, the W550 captures stills and video-clips – with 4x digital zoom for close-ups – that can then be stored or shared using MMS or Bluetooth, or even transferred to a PC via USB cable.

The W550 is a Tri-band / GPRS phone and will be available during early Q4 in two different variants:

W550i - Triple Band GPRS 900/1800/1900MHz version for European, African, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Hong Kong markets

W550c - Triple Band GPRS 900/1800/1900MHz version for mainland China

In addition the W600a Walkman phone for the Americas that was announced on June 13 in New York as a Tri-Band/Edge product will now become the W600i for global distribution as a Quad-Band/Edge phone (850/900/1800/1900). The product will start shipping in the Americas from early Q4.