Sony Ericsson has launched its next batch of phones, including ones in its Cybershot and Walkman brands, which naturally invite comparisons to the iPhone. In this case it’s not too much of a stretch, since Sony Ericsson does focus on musicphones and its handsets are likely to be in direct competition with the iPhone. A couple of good ideas, as reported by CNet:

—“The W960i features a candy bar design and is the Walkman phone to have touch sensitive controls. You’ll be able to use your finger or a stylus for menu navigation and music play but you’ll have access to more standard buttons as well…It certainly matches many of the featues in Apple’s upcoming device in a more traditional style.”

—“The W910’s has surprises of its own. With its “shake control” you can manipulate the phone’s functions by moving the phone itself. According to Sony Ericsson you’ll be able to skip music tracks by flicking your phone in to the right or left. What’s more, you can reshuffle your playlists by shaking the W910 back and forth and you can even use the shake control to play games.” Whenever I hear this sort of thing I always get concerned that the mere act of walking with your phone in your pocket will cause trouble, but I assume they’ll have done something for that.

—The newest camera-phone is the Sony Ericsson K850, a 5-megapixel camera phone that includes “an autofocus, a 16x zoom, a Xenon flash, a camcorder, a sliding lens cover, PictBridge technology for printing your photos and BestPic image editing options”.