Sony Ericsson unveiled its prototype Idou handset at its Mobile World Congress press conference tonight, and announced a new Big Idea called Entertainment Unlimited.
Whisper it softly, but it's pretty much the same Big Idea Nokia's pushing with its Ovi initiative, albeit with a less baffling title.
In other words, it's about combining music, imaging, gaming, content services and applications under one brand, rather than the separate Walkman and Cyber-Shot brands that Sony Ericsson has used until now.
Or, as the blurb describes it: "Uniting best in class entertainment experiences into one offering such as the Walkman music experience, the Cyber-shot imaging experience, Java gaming and messaging integrated with services and applications."
We'll be finding out exactly what this means for games when we sit down with Sony Ericsson at Mobile World Congress tomorrow, but integrating handsets more tightly with TVs, PCs and hi-fis also comes into it, as well as the company's PlayNow content portal.
Idou - a working title - will be on sale in the second half of this year, and is a pretty stunning handset specs-wise.
It has a 12.1-megapixel camera, a touchscreen plus "full-touch media menu", and is based on what will become the Symbian Foundation operating system. That means Symbian games too, of course.
Sony Ericsson also unveiled a second handset tonight, the W995, which it also hailed as emblematic of the Entertainment Unlimited concept.
It's got an 8.1-megapixel camera, a 2.6-inch screen, a full range of Walkman music features, and a new tech called Media Go that automatically syncs music playlists and other content between the phone and the user's computer.
Browse all our Mobile World Congress coverage by clicking here.
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Contributing Editor
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)
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