Celebrating 3 years since the first Walkman phone hit the market, Sony Ericsson is preparing the release of at least three new W-series handsets. The Swedish-Japanese company officially confirmed the new releases for July 22 (that's next week, on Tuesday).

For the moment, the rumored handsets that will get an official unveiling on July 22 are:

- the W902 candybar, which seems to be the new Walkman flagship phone, since it packs a 5 Megapixel camera and, obviously, high-end music capabilities;

- the W595 slider, which should come as the successor of W580;

- and W302, another candybar, but only a mid to low-end one, said to be the Walkman version of the S302 photo-oriented handset.

In order to better inform us about the upcoming "grand release", Sony Ericsson came up with a mini website, where it's stated that "the next chapter in mobile music will be unveiled on July 22, 2008 at 10:00 CET, with a live Q&A webcast at 11:00 CET".

On the mini website, Sony Ericsson also presents important events from the history of Walkman phones (a history of only 3 years, but still).

The Walkman adventure started in August 2005, when Sony Ericsson W800 was released. The W800 is a pretty thick candybar (100 x 46 x 20.5 millimeters) with only 34MB of built-in memory, but at the time of its launch it was really "something new", so it quickly became a hit.

SE further mentions about its first clamshell Walkman, the W300, which even had a Robbie Williams special edition. Moreover, the company says that, at the end of 2007, there were more than 50 million Walkman handsets sold worldwide.

To check the Walkman mini-site yourself, you can visit it at this address.

Now all we can do is wait for July 22 to come, hoping that the new phones will be as cool as Sony Ericsson wants us to believe they are.