Sony Ericsson Aino

“Sony Ericsson Aino is without a doubt one entertaining slider. It does pretty much all the stuff the other Sony Ericsson feature phones do, but does it better. It brings in some heavy multimedia firepower such as a PS3-inspired touch menu, a large 3-inch touchscreen, VGA@30fps video recording. Of course, Wi-Fi and GPS are also in the mix to make the device that much more tempting. The Remote Play feature, initially developed for PSP, enables users to control and access media content on Playstation 3 from their phone. Unfortunately, we don't really find the Sony Ericsson Aino exterior breathtaking. It rather takes a somewhat conservative approach and an unassuming touch-only look, when it's not opened.”

“Sony Ericsson's Aino is proof that the higher you reach the harder you can fall. This phone looked like it had huge potential, but, in the end, just gave us a pain in the Aino. Sporting groovy good looks, it's packed with innovative features, including the ability to remotely control your PlayStation 3. Unfortunately, its huge range of interesting features is poorly organised and occasionally nonsensical.”

“Now it´s about time we use our imaginary scales, weight up the positive features of the handset against its shortcomings and see if it´s ultimately worth it. On the one hand, we´ve got excellent multimedia capabilities – great camera, super audio quality through the boxed Bluetooth hands-free and a large screen ideal for videos. On the other, the browser is quite bad, the keypad is unhandy and the touch-sensitivity of the screen is limited, meaning you would have to open the slider anytime you need to do even simple things. Oh, we almost forgot something really important - the retail price tag of the Sony Ericsson Aino is about $645.The latter prevents us from being able to recommend the Aino. Don´t get us wrong, this is a truly capable multimedia handset that will keep you entertained all the way. In time, you will even get used to the touch-sensitive menu and the whole idea about the screen and its limited functionality. Unfortunately, the rather steep price tag places the handset in the vicinity of the Samsung OmniaHD i8910, Omnia II i8000 and Pixon12 M8910 and this is, by all means, a losing battle. They offer better video capture functionality, DivX and Xvid video playback, and the former two are smartphones equipped with larger displays.Similarly to the Sony Ericsson Satio, the Aino rolls out too late to make a difference. If the handset had been released at the beginning of the year, it could have stood a chance against the multimedia cell phones. The market has, however, developed really fast and the Sony Ericsson Aino looks obsolete at the end of 2009.”