Sony Ericsson Announce Aino & Yari

It’s been a busy few days for the guys over at Sony Ericsson, with not 1, but 3 handsets being officially launced. The first – Satio, is the official name for the 12MP touchscreen ‘Idou’ that was announced back in February and is covered on a separate post.

The Idou certainly attracted a lot of attention at the Mobile World Congress, and the Aino & Yari will no doubt turn a few heads too.

First up then is the Sony Ericsson Yari. The name is unusual, especially as Sony Ericsson are known for using model numbers with letter prefix to determine the range the handset belongs to ( think W for Walkman, C for Cyber-Shot etc..), but as Sony Ericsson are moving towards a new ‘Entertainment Unlimited’ range, I suppose the naming rules had to change too. Anyway, back to the phone. The Yari is a Slide handset that is a strong all round multimedia handset, with a 5MP camera, HSDPA for faster Internet, GPS, 2.4" screen and support for 16GB memory cards.

The one feature though that makes this phone stand out though is something new called gesture gaming. I say new, gesture gaming has been around for a while, since the introduction of accelerometers anyway, but the Yari takes this a step further. As well as being able to detect movement and translate this into game controls, the Yari can use its camera to detect movement and translate them in to game moves too (similar concept to eyetoy for the Playstation 2). Add this to multiplayer support, and you’ve got a whole new gaming experience on a mobile phone. Sony Ericsson have tried to launch a gesture gaming phone before, the F305, but this had limited success, as most other features on the phone were quite low spec. Hopefully with the Yari having a better camera, more storage and faster internet, this will have more success.

The Menu system on the Yari has been given an upgrade too, you can now view your geo-tagged photos on a map on the phone using Google Maps and you can send your images directly to Flickr & Picasa. In a first, the Yari also has a fully featured Walkman music player, despite the handset not being branded as a walkman device, the camera too has most of the features that you would normally only find on a Cyber-Shot branded phone.

You can find a more detailed preview on the Sony Ericsson Yari at GSMArena.

The Sony Ericsson Yari is expected to go on sale around September 2009, Register your interest for priority stock availability.

Next up is Aino, a touch screen Multimedia phone with a twist & baby brother the Satio.

The Aino has been designed act as a streaming media player when connected to a PS3 Console, so once you are connected to your Wi-Fi network, you’ll be able to access and control any music, pictures and video stored on your PS3 on your handset. The Aino also supports DLNA for watching back your media on networked TV’s and PC’s (What is DLNA).

The Aino has some pretty impressive features: 3" Touch screen display with Numerica Keypad, 8MP Camera, Support for 16GB memory cards, GPS, HSDPA & Wi-Fi for faster internet browsing. The Aino is though to include a desktop charging stand matching Bluetooth Headset.

The Menu system is the same as is found on nearly all Sony Ericsson handsets, the only real difference is that parts of it are now touch controlled. The camera, the FM radio, the gallery, the Walkman and the video player are enabled for touch control, with the rest of the phone being controlled using the traditional D-pad.

As with the Yari, the Aino has a fully featured Walkman Player and Camera. The camera on the Aino though has a touch based interface and is capable of recording video at near DVD quality. You can also sync your content to the phone using Wi-Fi, rather than USB.

The Aino also has Wayfinder navigation software preinstalled, along with Google Maps.

You can find a more detailed preview on the Sony Ericsson Aino at GSMArena.

The Sony Ericsson Aino is expected to go on sale around September 2009, Register your interest for priority stock availability.