Sony has been quietly re-introducing the Walkman brand into the public consciousness, after having completely lost its market position to the iPod. They're doing this not with their music player line (which is struggling, at best), but with their Sony Ericsson Walkman cell phones.

One nifty-if-puzzling feature: With some Walkman phones, you can quickly record a clip of a song you're listening to, and wirelessly send it to GraceNote, a widely-used digital media database, for identification. Many MP3s already have that ID information built in, however.

The real holy grail here is being able to buy music online, directly from your phone. You can currently do that, rather expensively, for $1.99 per track with Verizon V CAST Music and $2.49 per track with the Sprint Music Store.

The End User: Walkman in a Phone (via IHT)