[Thumbnail Image: Sony Ericsson Z1010]
Sony Ericsson announced and demonstrated it's first 3G phone today at the 3GSM World Congress - the Z1010. The Z1010 is a dual mode phone using UMTS/GSM-GPRS, supporting the GSM 900/1800 bands common to much of the world - but not North America.

Jan Wäreby, Corporate Executive VP, Head of Sales and Marketing at Sony Ericsson said "We are showing this product now to support operators' commercial 3G launch programmes and to inspire users and application developers with full 3G functionality support. 2003 will be the year when the industry will have to focus heavily on interoperability and standardisation in order to launch attractive 3G services and applications, Supporting this process is definitely one of Sony Ericsson's strengths thanks to our Ericsson heritage, closeness to the operators and the fact that we were the first ones to carry out hand-over between GSM and 3G in September 2002" Once interoperability testing is completed in Q2, there will be full commercial availability in the second half of 2003.

Not too much is known yet about this phone but we will update this story as we learn more. For now you can read a bit more about it at the official Sony Ericsson 3GSM website.

This new handset features the following:

• Streaming audio and video
• Images and clips via MMS and email
• Large 176x220 65k TFT display and 101x80 grey scale external display
• Twin Cameras, one designed for video calls
• Long range Bluetooth (up to 100 meters)
• USB, IrDA for file transfer
• Data rates up to 384 kbps when using UMTS

More photos are available on the following pages.