The newest Sony Walkman, the NW-A306, has just been released. Unlike the old times, however, it looks more like an iPod touch without the home button, but with the Sony logo.
For some of our younger readers, the Sony Walkman might be an alien product to you, so let me explain what it is. It was an extremely popular music player that was first released in 1979 as a portable cassette player, and it sold well, with 1980 selling 500,000 units, according to musicbusinessworldwide.com.
The media player was designed by Sony's co-founder Masaru Ibuka, because he wanted to "listen to music on long flights," according to musicbusinessworldwide.com. Even at it's 20th anniversary in 1999, it was said that people from all over were skeptical of it's success during it's development. They were proven wrong, and it became a social icon and a social phenomenon.
The new Walkman, however, has 32 GB of built-in storage, and, according to darko.audio, runs Android 12, which takes up half said internal storage. However, there is a saving grace, and that is that there is a SD card slot next to the battery, so you can store more than 18GB worth of music at any one time. According to a leaked screenshot, there is also the Google Play Store, meaning that you may not need to ever use the 18GB of remaining internal storage for music, but rather can just use streaming apps.
As shown above, its clear focus on media can't be understated. The first of this new line of smart Sony Walkmans was actually released in 2012, and it ran Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The price of the present-day Walkman is $430, according to Arstechnica.