A stylish new slider that plays music from your PS3? Check out our hands-on look at the Sony Ericsson Aino.
Of the three new high-end, strangely-named phones that Sony Ericsson has been showing off, our favorite in terms of style is definitely the Sony Ericsson Aino. Pictures don't do this phone justice. It has a sleek, stealthy look with a great line to it. It's a solid slider design, and a welcome departure from the blocky Walkman slider phones of late (to read our reviews of recent S/E sliders, click here). That dominating front display is actually a 3-inch touchscreen, running at an acceptable 432 by 240 pixel resolution. Slid open in phone mode, the phone was fairly standard. But closed, you can jump right into the multimedia content.
Please don't stop the music
When the phone is closed, the trapezoidal device gives you finger-slide access to a multimedia menu. From here, you can play your music, videos, photo library and more, and presumably this is also where you'll access media from your Playstation 3. The Sony Ericsson Aino will include support for Sony's Remote Play capability, so any music or videos you're storing on your PS3 will also be available for playback over the phone. Honestly, this is a nice feature, but what's even more impressive is the Media Home app, which pulls content from the Media Go desktop app on a PC to play on the phone over Wi-Fi. So, basically, whether you have a PS3 or a regular old PC, the Sony Ericsson Aino will be able to stream multimedia content wirelessly.
The Sony Ericsson Aino doesn't get Cyber-Shot branding or a cool lens cover around back, but it still gets a respectable 8.1-megapixel camera. The screen can be used for touch focus, and we like that Sony Ericsson is including this feature on more and more high end touchscreen phones. The all-touch Sony Ericsson Satio will use the same feature for its 12.1-megapixel camera.
Smarter than a 5th grader
Unlike the Satio, the Sony Ericsson Aino is not a smartphone, so it isn't running the Symbian OS, and third-party apps will be more limited. The phone won't be using the superior Webkit browser found on the higher-end Satio. Instead, it will use a version of the Access Netfront browser. We found the browser to be just acceptable on the Sony Ericsson W995, but with the Aino's enhanced touch capabilities, we wish Sony Ericsson had included something more powerful.
The Sony Ericsson Aino still gets Exchange ActiveSync support, which is great for corporate e-mail, calendar and contacts info. Plus, it will come equipped with an Instant Messaging app and a dedicated Facebook application. Hopefully the latter won't be a simple Web link, but rather an optimized app for the touchscreen device.
Not THAT kind of Playstation
The Sony Ericsson Aino will feature motion gaming, and a feature that Sony Ericsson is calling "walk mate," which we take to mean a pedometer and walking counter. For music playback, the phone has an impressive feature set, and some nice accessories. The Sony Ericsson Aino will come with an 8GB microSD card, as well as a pair of matching wireless headphones, a high-end extra that's a nice surprise. While Sony Ericsson is claiming 4.5 hours of talk time on a high-speed, 3G network, the phone will be capable of music playback times around 31 hours.
In our hands-on time with the Sony Ericsson Aino, we were clearly struck by the external design, but the interface didn't move us. The multimedia interface was a nice touch, and if anything, Sony knows how to present media on screen, but the rest of the interface felt like the standard icon grid that we could find anywhere. It was big enough to be touch friendly, but nothing special.
Price and release date
The Sony Ericsson Aino will be available with support for AT&T's 3G, HSDPA network, but specific pricing and availability have yet to be determined. Sony Ericsson likes making us wait for the good stuff, so we expect to see this phone by the end of the year, if not later in the U.S.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Archive