Sony Ericsson W760, the next Walkman phone set to conquer the mobile music market, is nearing the official release and rumors say this will happen before the end of May. Nevertheless, the handset seems to be already available, unlocked, from several online retail stores (here and here, for example), being sold at prices a bit over $400 (around 260 Euros).

W760 is truly a unique device, because it packs features never included before by Sony Ericsson into a Walkman phone. First of all, the handset comes with tri-band 3G / HSDPA connectivity which, added to the quad-band GSM one, makes it compatible with most of the existent mobile networks in the world. Moreover, W760 has a built-in GPS receiver, being the first SE phone with this feature. Together with the Wayfinder Navigator and pre-installed Google Maps, the GPS makes W760 an advanced navigation device.

The new Sony Ericsson handset also includes high-end music features (obviously, since it's from the Walkman series). We have Walkman 3.0 music player, "shake control" to control the player by only shaking the phone, dual stereo speakers, SensMe, TrackID, FM radio with RDS, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, plus a 1GB memory card that can be changed with another one, of up to at least 4GB.

Other nice features of the W760 slider include: a 2.2 inch TFT display with 256K colors and 240 x 320 pixels, motion sensor and widescreen mode for a great gaming experience (Need for Speed ProStreet is pre-installed, by the way), a 3.2 Megapixel camera, email, RSS reader, NetFront browser, USB 2.0 and so on.

The W760 was recently spotted in China, live, in all its splendor. Its black splendor, to be more precise, because we're talking about the black version of the phone. This only confirms the fact that the handset is very close to being officially launched.

Besides the black color version (called "Intense Black" by Sony Ericsson), the W760 will also be available in Fancy Red and Rocky Silver, hence all the potential buyers will be able to get a version to suit their tastes.

While waiting for the official release of W760, which should come with details on the exact markets where the highly-featured Walkman phone will be available, we can enjoy the live pics from China: