Sony Ericsson introduces walkman phones / Waterfront Hotels' marketing head meets Cebu media

My favorite mobile brand, Sony Ericsson, hosted dinner to Cebu's lifestyle, entertainment and business scribes to introduce the brand's latest addition to its fast-selling mobile phone products. The casual affair was held at another "favorite" , the latest hang-out of the metro's "yuppies", Treff Bar, at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino.

Hopping from one table to another were Patrick Larraga, Sony Ericsson's Marketing Manager and Jessica Toe Hio, Product Marketing and Customer Service Manager giving us brief information of the new models before the formal widescreen presentation of the amazing Walkman phones: the W880/W888 and the W610 build on the success of hit-models such as the W810 and to broaden the appeal of the Walkman phone which to date, have sold 20 million units worldwide since the launch. The two new models will be available in the market by the end of this month.

At just 9.4mm thin, the W880/W888 is the slimmest Sony Ericsson phone yet and combines the full Walkman phone experience with device that fits easily into your pocket. The 1GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) provided in-box gives you room to store up to 900 full length tracks, while the host of innovative music applications (such as Walkman Player 2.0 & Disc2Phone) make it easy to get music onto your phone in the first place & search through play lists once its there. All of this, plus a 2.0 megapixel camera, is packed into UMTS phone that's slim as a standard CD case.

The W610 Walkman phone is all about the detail, whether this is detail in design that builds on the look of earlier Walkman phones or the detailed combination of mobile music with a credible digital camera. The W610 stores up to 470 full-length music tracks on the 512MB Memory Stick Micro (M2) provided, and offers the inventive TrackID music recognition application; a feature that lets the user record a clip of an unknown music track onto their phone and immediately receive a notification of the track name, artist and album. Add to this a 2.0 megapixel camera with auto focus and the W610 is a credible fusion of phone, music player and digital camera.

Before the night ended, exciting games were played to everyone's excitement which definitely kept the casual mood that evening. Two brand new mobile phones were raffled-off, too, which landed to the lucky hands of The Freeman's very own Entertainment Editor Nathalie Tomada and Cebu Daily News' Life! Assistant Editor Niza Mariñas.

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Over at the Waterfront Airport Hotel and Casino Mactan, another media get together took place, this time to formally introduce the Group Marketing Communications Manager of Waterfront Hotels and Casinos, Ana Crizel Cruz over dinner at the recently renovated and definitely improved UNO.

Waterfront Mactan's Resident Manager, the dapper and accommodating Hembler Mendoza together with his efficient Sales and Marketing Communications Officer Lucille Brashner, were there, too, and informed the group on what's going on within the hotel as well as the forthcoming events and activities which we will be updating you on soon.

Most of us didn't call it a night as earlier expected for some colleagues, the likes of Sunstar's Jude Bacalso and The Freeman's newest contributing writer Dianne Gandionco gamely jammed and belted-out quite a number of songs with the R&B band, Adlib. "Thank you for gracing my concert" was Jude's parting words after an hour or so, to the amazed and more than satisfied UNO diners.