Sony pushes motion gaming in a consumer friendly design. Check out our hands-on look at the Sony Ericsson Yari.
Like the Sony Ericsson Aino, the Sony Ericsson Yari is also a recognizable departure from the boxy slider phones the company had been creating until recently. While the Aino was sleek and stylish, the Sony Ericsson Yari is more fun. In our hands-on time with Sony Ericsson's new phone, we liked the large, plastic 4-way button in the center. It had a nice ridge that made for an easy grip while navigating the phone. And this phone is going to require a sure grip.
Throw, don't tell
The Sony Ericsson Yari is all about the motion control gaming. From the desktop screen, users get a carousel of games loaded onto the phone. It's a quick way to jump right into the gaming features. This is the sort of simple interface tweak that we like to see on specialized phones. Unfortunately, once we started jumping into the games, we were somewhat less impressed.
To test the motion sensitive gaming, company reps showed us a bowling game that comes loaded onto the Sony Ericsson Yari. Basically, you swing the phone like a bowling ball and the motion affects the onscreen game. We've seen similar games on other smartphones, and not just the Apple iPhone, but also the Sony Ericsson W995 that we reviewed recently. In our hands-on look, we didn't see any games that were terribly impressive, at least not graphically speaking. Hopefully, the gesture controls will be responsive and intuitive, and some fun gameplay could make up for a lack of graphical prowess. Besides the motion sensitivity, the Sony Ericsson Yari will also get a couple extra buttons for games.
Not just for playing games
Besides the motion sensitive gaming, the Sony Ericsson Yari will get a decent set of multimedia features. The phone uses a 5-megapixel camera with auto focus, face and smile detection. While not quite in league with it's larger brothers, the Sony Ericsson Aino and Sony Ericsson Satio, that's still a healthy sensor size and feature set to make the Yari a high-end shooter.
For music and multimedia, the Sony Ericsson Yari will ship with a 1GB microSD card, which is a paltry capacity, but we appreciate being able to use microSD, instead of Sony's usual proprietary format, Memory Stick Micro (M2). The phone sports a 2.4-inch, QVGA screen, and will be compatible with DLNA compliant home entertainment devices.
For music fans, the Sony Ericsson Yari will come with built-in stereo speakers, and the motion control features will be put to good use in the music player app, which will get shake control. As an unusual add-on, the Yari will have a special Music Call feature, which will let you share music tracks while talking to friend.
The Sony Ericsson Yari gets a healthy list of messaging options, including advanced text messaging and instant messaging. Over SMS messages, the Sony Ericsson Yari will be able to send location data. The Yari can also synchronize with an Exchange ActiveSync server, a surprising extra on a phone that aims at being so playful.
Hands on the Yari
While we like the new direction we see in the Sony Ericsson Yari (as well as the Aino), we still see something of an unfulfilled promise in this phone. The Aino gets PS3 Remote Play software, this phone gets motion gaming, but Sony Ericsson can't quite bring the two together to come up with a compelling gaming phone, let alone a phone worthy of any sort of Playstation branding. But that's what consumers want, and buyers who approach the Sony Ericsson Yari looking for a gaming phone will be disappointed by the last-generation games and apps that we saw in demonstrations with the device. However, as a simple multimedia handset with some advanced features, the Yari might be able to hold its own. The interface could use a serious update, but nothing a few clever themes couldn't fix. On the outside, the hardware was slick and polished.
Price and release date
We don't have any information on specific pricing or availability for the Sony Ericsson Yari, but Sony Ericsson has said that the phone will be available in a model with support for AT&T's 3G HSDPA network in late 2009.
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