In Japan Sony NW-S203F on the market now. The NW-S203F appeared in three colors: pink, silver and black. The new Sony MP3 player comes in a spill and sweat proof aluminum casing. Sports related features: calorie, steps and distance counter.

Other features include shuffle, sport mode playlist, FM Tuner. The shipping date of the NW-S203F with 1GB storage is also shipping September 15th in Japan.

By selecting ‘My Favorite Shuffle’, the device automatically selects the most listened to 100 songs and plays them at random. The ‘Time Machine Shuffle’ function randomly selects a year and plays all of the songs from that particular year that are currently held on the device.

Once switched on, a mobile phone style ‘Home’ menu appears offering nine different options that can be selected via the four-way directional button. These include ‘Music Library’, ‘Play Mode’, ‘Initial Search’, ‘Intelligent Shuffle’, ‘Favorite 100′, ‘Play History’, ‘Settings’, ‘Playlist’ and ‘Now Playing’.

Music can be searched in a variety of ways, via ‘Genre’, ‘Artist’, ‘Album’, ‘Song’, ‘Release Date’, ‘Rating’ and ‘Recently Transferred’, all of which can be scrolled through to enable users to find their music faster and easier. Sony WALKMAN records three years of playback history that can be searched and also features the first ever ‘Initial Search’ on a hard disc device, allowing the user to scroll from A-Z for ultimate ease of use.

The models will measure W55.0mm x H88.1mm x D18.7mm (the thinnest part is 11.5mm) with a 1.5in screen for the 6Gb player and W65.2mm x H104.2mm x D21.4mm (the thinnest part is 13.5mm) with a 2in screen for the 20Gb.

The Walkman Bean is a palm-sized MP3 player that comes with 1Gb or 512Mb of storage and 50 hours of battery life. The models will be priced at ?99 and ?79 respectively.

“Walkman Bean is sure to be the most instantly appealing digital music player on the market,” said Gregory Kukolj, general manager for Sony Personal Audio Europe.

“Walkman Bean combines striking design with optimum functionality and is fun, engaging and simple to use. All that, combined with an attractive price point, will make Walkman Bean irresistible to the consumer.”

The Bean comes in four colours: Tropical Ice (blue), Cotton Candy (pink), Licorice (black) and Coconut (white), reflecting the jelly beans it is designed to resemble. Music is downloaded via a pop-out USB port.

The Bean’s battery life is a significant improvement on the iPod Shuffle’s 12-15 hours and the new device also has a quick charge facility that can give three hours playing time on a three-minute charge.

Sony NW-HD5 digital music playerThe NW-HD5 is equipped with a 20GB drive, which sports a “G Sensor” to detect sudden drops and cushion the storage medium to prevent damage and data loss. IBM recently added such a mechanism to its ThinkPad hard drives, as did Apple with it laptops, but this is the first time we’ve seen the technique applied to portable music players.

The player goes on sale in Japan on 21 April for around ?35,000 (?172). There’s no word yet on European or US availability, but we note the Japanese unit incorporates English, French, German, Spanish and Italian language support, so a broader roll-out has to be on the cards.