Sony's New Rolling Music Player

Sony has unveiled its brand new music player which deviates from the design of current music players. Dubbed as the "Rolly", Sony's brand new egg-shaped digital music player sports a 1 Gigabyte of internal flash memory and can also be used as a Bluetooth wireless stereo speaker.

The Rolly can fit on the palm of the user's hand and has motion sensors which can detect if it's being held upright or the other way around so that the volume can be adjusted if the device is turned clockwise or counter-clockwise. The Rolly can also change tracks when the user rolls the player forward or backward or by shaking it. But what is different about the Rolly is the device's capabilities to dance and move to the tunes it is playing by rolling, flapping its lid-like caps, and flashing blue and green lights.

The Blogosphere has been filled with rumors about the Rolly's release ever since a popular technology blog site has gotten hold of an unofficial promotional video of the Sony Rolly. Sony has been silent for weeks about the existence or nonexistence of the device but the company finally broke its silence today as it unveiled and demonstrated the device's capabilities in a Hotel in Tokyo.

The Rolly's promotional video can be seen over at SonyStyle Japan's website. In the video, the Rolly is shown to be playing clear and crisp music and the motion sensor capabilities were also demonstrated as when it is turned upright, one lid closes to control the volume. The promotional video also suggests that the Rolly can be programmed to dance to custom moves. In Associated Press' interview with Sony, the company revealed that packaged moves can be downloaded from the Sony website but a special program is available that can analyze music and turn it into choreographed movements that match the rhythm of the songs. The movements can be transferred through Bluetooth or via cable. The Rolly can play MP3 and ATRAC files but the device has no display, though according to Associated Press, the Rolly can be set as an alarm clock. According to reports, the Rolly can store more than 600 songs but the capacity will go down if complex moves are added to the Rolly.

In Japan, there are several gadgets that can move to music from Apple's iPod and a product called Miuro, similar to the Rolly, also dances and wheels to tunes from the iPod.

The 300 gram Rolly will be available in Japan on September 29^th and will cost 40,000 Yen or $354. As of writing, no International release has yet been announced.

SOURCE:

Rolly Website, Sony Style Japan

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