New Sony A and ZX Walkmans Coming

Finally some good news for Walkman fans, Sony has 2 new models lined up, an A-Series and a ZX-Series. The two Walkmans just appeared on the FCC, YY1301B1 (A) and YY1302B2 (ZX).

Details are limited, but both players will run Android and feature 2.4/5.0Ghz Wifi and Bluetooth. I cannot find any mention of LE Audio in the filing, so either this is coming later or it has been excluded from the filing. We need to wait for the Bluetooth SIG certification to see if LE audio support is included.

Update 5

Both the A300 and ZX700 passed through Malaysia’s E-ComM certification site last week.

For comparison, the new WM1 mark 2 models (YY1298B and YY1299B), passed through E-ComM on November 29 2021. Those WM1 press reveal was on February 8th, so 71 days from appearance to announcement. If we add 71 days to the December 22 date, we get March 3 2023 as a possible press reveal date. Short term confidentiality ends on March 27 2023, so Sony announcing these in early March is very possible.

Update 4

Quick update again, Sony removed the original label drawings which I have used in this post and replaced them with some generic looking label drawings, dated 20221014.

Moving on, I was looking at the NW-A300 and NW-ZX700 listing again, and I noticed one small detail I missed earlier. There appears to be wireless adapter information in the listing, the WCN3950.

This page (no longer accessible) has the chipsets which seem to use this adapter. We can see the QCS2290 that will be used in the NW-A300, but there is no SDA660 which I thought could be used in the ZX700. So perhaps this is not the chipset being used. So perhaps Sony will use the QCM4290 or QCS4290 chipset, it is an octa core and up to 2.0Ghz. Sony could easily have 4 cores at 1.8 and the rest at 2.0Ghz. The SM4250 only goes up to 1.8Ghz, so I doubt it is this one. Another option is the QCS6125/QCM6125, which are the Snapdragon 600 line. The other 2 options are the Snapdragon 662 (SM6115) or the Snapdragon 680 (SM6225). I compared the chipsets on Geekbench to the ZX700, and it looks like the SM6115 or Snapdragon 662 matches the benchmarks. But that does not confirm it will be these chips.

Finally, both the A and ZX seem to have had their designs finalized in March of this year according to the FCC filing, as both devices had their “Schematic diagram and Block” finalized on March 14th.

Both models appeared on Geekbench again 2 days ago, A300, ZX700.

Update 3

The ZX700 has appeared on Korea’s FCC. Place of production is China.

Update 2

The new A-Series has finally shown up on Bluetooth SIG.

The new model has been certified with Bluetooth 5.0, and not 5.2, so unless it is re-certified, there will be no LE Audio support by the looks of it. The certification also confirms the Qualcomm SoC, while not specifically the QCS2290, it is in the list. Anyways, an interesting note is the Design Description, “Bluetooth technology platform for YY130x series”. Hmm while I doubt that the ZX uses the same chip since the benchmarks are higher, it begs the question, why does it say YY130x series? Anyways, I hope the ZX will show up on Bluetooth SIG soon, it would help with identifying the SoC used.

Update

Both the new A-series and ZX-Series have been found listed on Geekbench (thanks anonymous). Recall the previous A100 and ZX500 both used the same processor, the i.MX 8M Mini Quad. Well it appears Sony has decided to move to Qualcomm SoCs for this generation. The NW-A300 uses a 4 core chip, rated at 2.00 Ghz and with 4GB of ram, and the ZX700 uses an 8 core chip (4×1.8 Ghz, 4×2.0 Ghz) also with 4GB of ram. Both are running Android 12, special Sony edition (see below). I did mention in the original post of Qualcomm software being used for testing, I assumed it may have been just a Qualcomm Chip embedded into an SoC, but it seems Sony opted for full Qualcomm SoCs now, which means aptX should be onboard.

The A-series appeared on Geekbench as far back as early March of this year, so Sony has been developing the new model for a while now. The other entries are May 5th, June 6th, July 29th, and October 25th and 28th. The Geekbench entry does not reveal the actual chip, apart from the cores, ram and frequencies (see above), but we have a gfxbench entry which reveals a lot more details.

The entry is from late October, so recent; it reveals the screen resolution, 1280×720, and the size, 3.6″. The chip is a 4 core, 2 Ghz/core and the GPU is the Qualcomm Adreno 702. This is not part of the Snapdragon lineup, instead using one of Qualcomm’s Application processors, the QCS2290. The SoC is built on a 11nm process which is superior to the i.MX 8M Mini Quad in the A100, which was on 28nm process from what I can find online. This should bring much improved battery life for the new A300.

One issue I can see is the Bluetooth connectivity, the Qualcomm website only shows version 5.0, so I do not see LE Audio working on the new model, since it requires version 5.2. Hopefully this can be fixed in the future with firmware. Although to get the best sound quality, I would think users would opt for a wired connection than wireless.

To see the A300 Geekbench scores, click here. For a quick comparison with the A100, click here.

Moving onto the NW-ZX707, we have only the Geekbench information for now, 8 core, with 4 cores at 2.0 Ghz, and 4 cores at 1.8 Ghz. Similar appearance in the benchmarks like the A300, early March, then May, June, late July and finally late October. The results can be found here. The scores are significantly better than the A300, with almost 2x the score in single-core and 2.5x in multi-core. My guess is the SoC being used in the ZX-series could be the Qualcomm SDA660, mostly because it is an 8 core SoC, with 4 cores up to 2.2 Ghz and 4 cores up to 1.8 Ghz. If this is the case, the GPU is slightly slower than the 702 in the A300 but the SoC is faster, due to the custom Qualcomm Kryo cores. There is a chance Sony might use the QCS8250 and just keep the core frequencies lower to save on battery. Once we get a gfxbench score, we will now for certain.

Also the new A-Series and new ZX-Series appeared on the Canadian certification sites a few weeks back.

End of Updates