Review of the Sony Ericsson Aino
The Sony Ericsson Aino is the second release under the newly revitalised Sony Ericsson brand following on from the flagship Satio with its 12.1 Megapixel camera. In a departure from previous releases that saw handsets grouped under certain families such as the Walkman range for music phones and Cybershot for camera phones, new Sony Ericsson phones instead aim to tick every box in an effort to appeal to those after an all in one device. Will this departure pay off for Sony Ericsson and can the Sony Ericsson Aino deliver the all in one package promised? Read on for our full review.
Similar to the Samsung Tocco Ultra released last year, the Sony Ericsson Aino combines a touch sensitive display with a slide out alpha numeric keypad. But, where as the Tocco Ultra was more fun and youthful with its colourful styling, the Aino strikes a more serious pose with a matte black finish with a highly polished stripe that runs the perimeter of the phone. When closed the Aino is all display, dispensing with physical buttons in favour of a minimalist design which is right on the money helping the Aino to look effortlessly cool. One solitary Sony Ericsson logo sits at the top whilst on the right side we get the zoom/volume and camera capture keys, left houses the headphone/ charging point and on the top sits the power button. The slide opens with a reassuring weight to it and is spring loaded so it snaps into the correct position with ease. The keypad itself is nicely laid out with a block of keys at the top handling navigation, calling and ending a call, menu and back buttons and the short cut keys whilst the four row numerical keypad sits below, nicely spaced out to accommodate all shapes and sizes.
As soon as you pick up the Aino and hold it in your hand, you'll instantly recognise that this is a premium device. The materials used are of the highest quality, the balance between size and weight is spot on and the styling looks every bit as classy as standalone Sony products. There is little to no give in the slide mechanism when it is closed and open placing it as one of the best slide phones ever made. Where previous Sony Ericsson products have been criticised for inferior build quality compared to their rivals, the Aino is well equipped to stand toe to toe. The box contents are equally impressive; Sony Ericsson have thrown in an 8GB memory card (though the Aino will take up to a 32GB card), docking station and stereo headphones that support Bluetooth so music can be streamed wirelessly and calls can be answered as well.
The Aino features a touchscreen of sorts though if you're after a purely touchscreen experience, you'd be advised to look elsewhere. The touchscreen can be used to answer and reject calls when the slide is shut. When not receiving a call and the phone is closed shut, sliding up and following the on screen prompt switches the screen to landscape and presents you with a multimedia menu and five shortcuts (for camera, gallery, music, movies and the FM radio). Swiping your finger across these shortcuts reveals how responsive the touchscreen is and it's a shame that this method of navigation is used so sparingly. The touchscreen is also employed in such areas as the camera and on the occasions that you do get to use it it’s a real bonus. As for the quality of the display, the Aino features a 3.0 inch capacitive display with a 240 x 432 pixel resolution and without hitting the highs of recent efforts from Samsung and the iPhone, it performs well with a nice crisp resolution and bright natural colours.
The Aino is a feature phone rather than a smartphone and so runs on a proprietary user interface. The layout of the menus will be familiar to anyone who's used a PS3 or PSP. Hitting the main menu button opens up a single menu page with icons laid out in a honeycomb format. Graphics swirl around the icon that you're currently on and selecting the icon the opens up a list that you can scroll through to get to the various different areas. The minimalist styling in black and white looks great and also makes it easy to get to where you want to go. As the phone isn't a smartphone we can't expect the kind of third party support the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian phones enjoy when it comes to apps but you will be pleasantly surprised to see the amount on offer. Sony Ericsson have, through a main portal in the web browser, a wide range of apps that can be downloaded to enhance the phone ranging from games to music and office applications. Be warned though, these apps don't come cheap with some fetching up to £10. As the Aino supports Java, you're not restricted just to the Sony Ericsson offerings so if you're on a budget there's plenty out there.
Though we’re still waiting for the much rumoured PSP phone, the Aino is the closest effort yet and the first phone to feature one of the PSP's crowning glories; Remote Play. Remote Play lets you access your PS3's content (music/ photos/ videos etc.) from anywhere in the world. To set up the Aino for this feature, you'll need to register the phone with your PS3. Admittedly this took a little while to get up and running but once the connection has been established for the first time all your settings will be saved. From here out it's just a case of hitting the Remote Play icon in the Aino's main menu when you're out and about, accessing a Wi-Fi hotspot or local Wireless network and you're off. The Aino's display will mimic that of the PS3 and let you navigate and access all your media. If you've got a lot of multimedia saved on your PS3's internal hard drive, Remote Play is great as it'll give you no holds barred access to all your music and movies. As it uses a Wi-Fi connection, data usage is also kept to a minimum. The Aino does fall short of the full Remote Play connectivity that the PSP enjoys as there is no support for games of any kind so portable gaming is ruled out of the equation. That said, the fact that Sony Ericsson have included the feature in one of its phones finally shows that the company is starting to get the best out of the marriage of the two brands.
The Aino features an 8.1 Megapixel camera with a built in LED Flash. Additional camera features include auto focus and face detection, a variety of different scene settings, Geo-tagging using the phones built in GPS receiver and, my personal favourite feature, touch focus. The camera is one of the areas of the phone that takes full advantage of the touchscreen and so settings can be accessed by touching the on screen short cut. From here you can tinker with the above array of camera features to get the settings just right. Touch focus however is not something that needs to be activated. When you want to use it, rather than using the camera button to capture an image, simply select the area on the viewfinder that you want to focus on and the Aino will duly oblige and then capture. This can feel fiddly at first as the on screen settings also occupy part of the viewfinder so at times I found myself opening the settings menu when I was actually trying to use the touch focus feature and vice versa but on the whole it works well.
As for the photos themselves, the Aino enters the 8.0 Megapixel market when it is reaching a stage of maturity and manages to establish itself as one of the best. Images are sharp and crisp and show a good level of colour without looking overly saturated. Noise is also kept to a minimum and the flash (an LED unit rather than the more favourable Xenon found elsewhere) performs admirably in low light conditions. Face detection works well in recognising and focusing on faces in your viewfinder though smile detection would have been a nice addition. Geo-tagging is a doddle to use as it's simply a case of switching it on from the settings menu and then following the on screen prompts. Video capture is equally impressive capturing at 30 frames per second in VGA resolution making for smooth and crisp movies with little in the way of lag.
The web browser on the Aino is a bit of a mixed bag. Selecting the web browser application in the main menu gives you a Sony Ericsson portal from which you can choose to search on Google, enter a specific URL and access a selection of different shortcuts. The problems arise when you're on a web page. On other phones, icons appear on screen telling you your options (back, save bookmark etc.) but on the Aino all you get is four icons without any sort of description as to what they might do. Ok, so the magnifying glass is a no brainer but how do you manage your history, refresh pages etc.? Hitting the settings button again then opens a more thorough settings toolbar but without an on screen prompt to do so, it can lead to a frustrating first couple of attempts hitting every button to get to the desired menu. A minor gripe as the actual web browser itself is clear and easy to use, handling most websites without incident.
The music player on the Aino is fairly straight forward and will be instantly recognisable to those who've used a recent Walkman phone. Plug your Aino into a PC or laptop and it will appear on your desktop as a mass storage device. From here, it's just a case of dragging and dropping your desired tracks from your desktop to the Aino and away you go. The 8GB card is more than enough storage to get you started and the option expand up to 32GB puts the Aino on a par with the highest capacity iPhone. Opening up the music player presents users with a vertical list letting you choose by track, artist, album and playlists. Once selected, you get cover art (if you've uploaded it that is) and the four way navigation keys handle skip back and forward, play and stop and the middle button pauses the current track whilst at the top of the display you get a counter showing you how far through the song you are. Sony Ericsson have also included SensMe which lets you sort your music by mood so you can match your music to how you feel. The headphones included are also of exceptional quality producing good crisp sound with excellent bass. For those who like to customise though be warned, the Aino uses a proprietary headphone jack rather than a standard 3.5mm jack so you're limited to Sony Ericsson products.
Impressively, on the video and movie front the Aino features BBC iPlayer support meaning you can catch up on all your favourite shows from the past week. Not just limited to BBC 1, you get the whole BBC catalogue meaning cutting edge comedy, soaps, drama and sci-fi are all at you finger tips. As this is a Sony Ericsson phone, the Aino also supports PlayNow Arena, Sony's download service that gives you access to hundreds of games and albums from all the latest performers. More Nokia Music store than iTunes, the PlayNow Arena is still nicely laid out giving you newly added and most downloaded top 10's so you can see what's hot and what's new.
Having used the Aino extensively for the past few days it becomes clear that the phone is packed full of features but it isn't without its flaws. The biggest flaw is a bit of an odd one as it's the excellent touchscreen. It's responsive and a good size so it seems a shame that it's not used more frequently. If the Aino was a full touchscreen and the display was as responsive in all areas as it is in the multimedia features, the Aino could easily take on the established players in the touchscreen game. The web browser is also a bit poorly thought out as it's not very intuitive and takes time to get to grips with. The fact that the Aino isn't a smartphone also means there are limited options to install a new browser, only the alternative java browsers that are available. Despite these flaws, the Aino still comes out on top. Remote Play is a great feature that we'd like to see in more Sony Ericsson phones and really bridges the gap between the two brands. The camera is excellent; easy to use and delivers some stunning results whilst the other multimedia options such as support for BBC iPlayer, the excellent music player and expandable memory push the Aino as a multimedia phone. And one of the biggest positives of the Aino is the phone itself in terms of build and design. Where as previous Sony Ericsson's have looked suspect, the Aino looks and feels great and will definitely take day to day knocks and bumps in its stride.
The first phone to feel more Sony than Sony Ericsson and all the better for it, the Aino looks and feels great and is just as good to use with a list of features as long as your arm and the excellent Remote Play the icing on the cake.
Dan, Mobiles.co.uk
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