Sony Ericsson Feng seen in the wild

That's the Feng sitting nicely on top
That's the Feng sitting nicely on top

Sony Ericsson - you can't say it's accepting its falling ranking in the mobile manufacturing stakes easily. Instead, it decides to have two days within a month of each other when it will release approximately a million handsets.

The new Feng (or W302 to give it its proper title) will be a mid- to low-end camera phone, designed for those who want a stylish-looking device but don't give a jot about functionality.

Bearing more than a passing resemblance to the W880, which is now a year old (you remember…thin as a CD case? Had those funny buttons? Ah yes, it's all coming back now) the Feng packs some pretty similar specs too.

Feng Shui

In fact, they're more along the identical lines. Both have a 2MP camera without any extras like autofocus or flash. There's no sign of expandable memory with the Feng, though a Walkman phone without it pretty rare so it may just be the photos obscuring it.

Both have a similar form factor, with similar screens. In fact, you have to question what Sony Ericsson is doing releasing the same phone again.

To be fair, the W880 was a pretty high end device last year, with a grand marketing scheme behind it to get things going. The Feng is likely to be pretty cheap, and may just be a slightly re-badged version of its older brother.

Expect it to be announced on July 22nd, and you can have it in your hands around October.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.