New Sony Walkman Music Players Feature Stunning Appearance, Android 12

The Sony Walkman NW-A300. It's a shame that Sony never became a force in smartphones because, wow, their product designs are still so good. sony

Yes, it's normal Android. sony

The bottom. From left to right, we have a headphone jack, lanyard hole, USB-C port, and microSD slot. sony

Music Buttons! So many music buttons! sony

The back has that lovely scallop texture. sony

The frame is made of aluminum. sony

It comes in colors. This gray really hits me in Sony's nostalgic sweet spot. sony

There are small folio cases! They are so cute. sony

The folio case allows it to stand up! sony

Sony has released a pair of new Android walkmans, the NW-A300 and NW-ZX700. Yes, that's right, Walkmans, the legendary Sony music player brand of the 1980s. Apple may have abandoned the idea of ​​a music player music adjacent to a smartphone when it recently killed off the iPod Touch line, but Sony still makes Android-powered walkmans and has for some time. The first was in 2012 with the Android 2.3 Gingerbread-powered NWZ-Z1000, which looked like Sony had just removed the modem from an Xperia phone and released it as a music player. Since then, Sony has made designs with more purpose-built hardware, and now there's a whole host of Walkman music players running Android. Unfortunately, these new models only seem to be on sale in Japan, the UK and Europe at the moment.

We'll start with the more user-friendly of the two, the NW-A300. This basic design debuted in 2019 with the NW-A105, but it came with Android 9. This is an upgraded version of that device...