Sony Ericsson Aino

At A Glance:

Build quality: 8/10
Applications: 7/10
Interface: 7/10
Value-for-money: 7/10
Overall rating: 7/10

+ Attractive design
+ Wide range of entertainment features
+ Great camera quality
- No 3.5mm headphones jack
- Limited touchscreen functionality

In the box
- Sony Ericsson Aino
- USB Power Adaptor
- Standard Charger
- Sony Ericsson Headphone
- Sony Ericsson wireless headset
- Manual
- Desktop docking cradle

The Sony Ericsson Aino is the company’s latest multimedia phone, the phone has high-end features, and a large 3 inch screen all packed into a white svelte casing. The Aino which was launched with the Yari and Satio, represents a breakaway from the conventional nomenclature of Sony Ericson’s alphabet names.

Design

The Sony Ericsson Aino is multimedia-centric phone of the Walkman line, and is quite an attractive phone. The phone is all white, accentuated with blue metal brushings. The Aino’s slider is easy to operate, sliding it open and close will only require an opposable thumb. However, it’s not the sturdiest phone we’ve ever used- the slider is rather wonky when opened, as the joints can wobble.

The phone is larger and longer, and is a little on the heavy side at 135g.

There’s a 3.0 inch screen with a 16M TFT colours, which offers decent colours and screen quality. When closed the large screen is perfect for movies and picture, as there are no buttons to be seen. The Aino has a peculiar touchscreen functionality, and will only appear when the slider is closed.

On the left spine, there’s the universal Sony Ericsson port for charging and headphones. The right spine has the quick camera button and a volume rocker.

Crack open the slider and the keypad will be exposed. The phone’s D-pad is directly underneath the screen, so are the phone’s quick buttons, shortcut keys and cancel button. The call/end call button is here as well. The sunken keypad isn’t very friendly, as the D-pad, and its surrounding keys are all place within a modular piece of plastic. The lack of tactile feedback makes texting and navigating through the phone a real hassle.

Open up the back and you’ll see the SIM slot and the M2 card slot. The slot has an 8GB M2 card and can support up to 32 GB memory. The phone itself has 55MB worth of internal memory.

The package includes a desktop docking cradle, which connects turns the Aino into a multimedia player. Dock the phone and you can play music or videos from the speaker. The phone can act as a slideshow photo frame, and radio too.

Features
The Aino runs on Sony Ericsson’s proprietary OS. It is basically a similar OS to SE phones from before and it has the 4x3 grid. Expect similar functionality, Playnow, Internet, Media, Camera, Messaging, Location services, Contacts, and Settings.

The Aino’s accelerometer supports pictures, videos and webpages. The phone also has an onboard GPS, and Google Maps is the default map here. PIM functionality is quite extensive for a music-centric phone, from a countdown timer, alarm, notes, tasks and an organiser.

When the phone is closed, the phone turns into ‘multimedia mode’ and will appear with touchscreen functionality. In this mode, the phone has five icons, a camera button, gallery, music, videos and FM radio.

The music player looks and feels like the SE music players of before. The player is simple to use, click on any of the external buttons and immediately listen to some music, and we liked the volume rocker too. The video player is easy to use and supports Quicktime files as well.

As usual, our music library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available. You can also create your own playlists in no time. The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option.

Again, we have no qualms about the Aino’s music player, except for the lack of the 3.5mm jack.

Connectivity
The Sony Ericsson Aino has several connectivity options ranging from Wi-Fi, 7.2 HSDPA, EDGE/GPRS, quad-band GSM connectivity (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz), and Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP.

Sony Ericsson also hyped up the PS3 Remote Play connectivity, where the Aino can establish a remote connection to the Sony Playstation 3 which will be able to stream some of the PS3’s media (pictures, music and video) directly to the Aino. Also the PlayStation 3 home menu can be accessed through the phone.

Camera
The 8.1 megapixel camera is impressive, and has features like LED flash and autofocus. The picture quality is decent. The camera works well under all condition delivering crisp pictures, and good colours as well. The macro shots were also impressive, the details of the pictures came out rather nicely.

The Aino offers a good range of tweaking options, such as the ISO and white balance, and self timer. Our only qualm is that the camera isn’t quick enough, due to the save time. If you want to take a quick succession of shots, that might be a challenge.

Games
The Aino has two games, Crazy Penguin and Quadrapop. Crazy Penguin is a combination of timing and eye-hand coordination, from flinging penguins to aiming them to hit the offending polar bears. Quadrapop is a Tetris game with a cute animal twist, match four animals together and the blocks go away.

Verdict
Sony Ericsson Aino is a multimedia phone, and its clear Sony Ericsson is keen to revolutionise their phones. The phone is well designed, and we're hard pressed not to ogle it. It is well designed and is jam packed with high-end features.

At RM 1,999 the Aino is a phone that we would recommend to those who want their entertainment on the go, due to the phone’s extensive multimedia abilities, and high end connectivity options. However, the (limited) touchscreen and PS3 connectivity feels rather underwhelming. All in all, if you looking for a handset that will keep you entertained for hours, the Aino’s for you.