It’s still a concept product and the name will change, but when it ships in the latter half of the year, it’ll be the phone to watch out for. Enter the Idou, a high-end 12-megapixel touchscreen handset that will deliver Sony Ericsson’s “Entertainment Unlimited” a vision that it has been working toward since the start of the joint venture in 2001.

Details about the product are rather scant at the moment, but we do know the Idou will pack a Xenon flash module, a full touch-enabled media menu, 16:9 widescreen display, and run the Symbian Foundation operating system.

When it launches, users can expect a unified Walkman, Cyber-shot and Java gaming experience with the ability to share media across multiple devices, from handsets to computers, to home A/V systems. The concept isn’t terribly new as Nokia as been toying around similar ideas with Ovi, an integrated gateway for a multitude of its services. Apple, on the other hand, has also built an ecosystem around the iPhone with the App Store. Other companies like RIM and Palm are catching up as well.

How Sony Ericsson is going to deliver its vision remains a mystery for now, but head of global marketing and vice president of the company Lennard Hoornik is upbeat about it. In a press release statement, he said: “Everything that we have done to date has brought us to this point–we created the music phone category in 2005 selling over 100 million Walkman phones and we are now ready to unveil the next chapter in the evolution of the company–Entertainment Unlimited–giving consumers unlimited opportunities to share their entertainment experiences.”

source: asia.cnet.com