Sony takes the lid off mylo portable

By Simon Aughton

Posted on 10 Aug 2006 at 12:35

Sony has unveiled its first Wi-Fi broadband communication and entertainment device, the mylo personal communicator.

Capable of operating in any open 802.11b/g wireless network, the mylo is designed for people who use instant messaging as a primary form of communication. The name is derived from 'my life online' and the device also browses the Internet, plays music, sends emails and shows off your photos.

Add the built-in Skype client and mylo can make free Internet phone calls worldwide.

'The mylo personal communicator puts the fun parts of a computer in the palm of your hand,' said John Kodera, director of product marketing for personal communication devices at Sony Electronics. 'It's ideal for people who want to stay connected to their online friends and family, but not be weighed down by a PC or buffeted by charges for IM and texting on cell phones.'

Skype's Jaanus Friis said that the mylo is 'an interesting device, because it's the first of its kind. You can talk with it, but it's not really a phone. You can listen to music, but it's not just an MP3 player. It's all these combined, and more.

'We've put a lot of effort into working with Sony to make Skype run great on this thing,' Jaanus wrote on the Skype blog. 'It does all the Skype features you'd expect - calls, voicemails, chat (one-on-one and in groups, and with animated emoticons), profile and contact management....'

Mylo is available in black or white and has a 2.4in color LCD with a slide out qwerty keyboard. In addition to Skype it comes embedded with Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger plus a Web browser. There is 1GB of flash memory to store MP3, ATRAC or WMA music files, MPEG-4 video and JPEG images. Files can be transferred from a PC over a USB cable, via the Memory Stick Duo card slot or downloaded from the Net. And two mylos that are close can automatically detect each other and stream music and other files between each other.

Mylo's lithium-ion battery provides up to 45 hours of music playback, around seven hours of chatting and Web surfing or more than three hours of continuous Skype talk time. The device comes with a microphone, stereo headphones, USB cable and neoprene case.

The mylo personal communicator will be available from September for around $350. For more information see sony.com/mylo.