Sony Ericsson recently presented the newest additions to their trendy range of cell phones - the Aino and Satio. While I haven't had the chance to try out either handset myself, I've done considerable research on both. One thing is for sure; Sony Ericsson is clearly out to make a statement and the Aino is very much part of the agenda. At first glance, it's a touchscreen PMP, but on a second look it's a regular slider phone with an extra large screen. It's not your ultimate PlayStation phone but it does have Remote Play, to wirelessly pair with Sony's PlayStation 3.
As far as feature phones go, the Aino has pretty much everything - full-featured navigation, a great camera, plenty of internal storage and a simple-but-snappy touch media menu.
By the way, don't let anyone tell you touchscreen functionality is limited to the proprietary Sony Ericsson multimedia menu. I was pleasantly surprised with Opera Mini, which seemed to quite agree with the Aino touch system. Touchscreen navigation is all there and it performed very smoothly. This means touch controlled Java games might work as well.
All right, this was just a single little secret revealed. Let's take a closer look at what else the Aino may be hiding there.
The features are as follows:
* 3" 16M-color capacitive touchscreen, 240 x 432 pixels
* Quad-band GSM support
* Tri-band 3G with 7.2Mbps HSDPA, 2Mbps HSUPA
* 8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash; geotagging, touch-focus, face detection, image stabilization; VGA video recording @ 30fps
* Some degree of touchscreen functionality - touch-enabled media and camera interface
* Touch works in Java apps as well, e.g. Opera Mini
* Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS; Trial version of Wisepilot navigation software
* Wi-Fi with DLNA
* FM radio with RDS
* Stereo Bluetooth 2.1
* microSD card slot
* Wireless Bluetooth headset with 3.5 mm audio jack and nice headphones, desktop docking station and 8GB microSD card in box
* Remote play for Playstation 3
Despite all this though, the phone suffers from the same marketing flaw that many a Sony Ericson handset has in the past- Unreasonably high pricing. The smartphone is pitched at a whopping 28,950 rupees! Although I think the Aino is one of Sony's good launches since the walkman series, I fear the possibility that it may succumb to other smartphones in the Indian market like the Samsung Omnia HD, which has but almost identical features and is far reasonably priced. When will Sony Ericson learn do their homework thoroughly and get their market research teams to price gadgets correctly?
