Sony Ericsson Aino – Great Camera And Music Quality But Expensive
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Great screen, good music quality, 8.1 MP camera takes great pictures, the phone comes bundled with desktop stand for charging and Bluetooth headset.
Thumbs Down:
Very expensive, no 3.5 mm phone jack, nothing else in particular.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: GPS, 8.1 megapixel camera, music player, Bluetooth, wi-fi.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The three inch TFT LCD display of Sony Ericsson Aino has resolutions of 240 x 432 pixels, has 24-bit (16.7 million colors)
Supported audio formats are AAC, MP3. Supported video formats are 3GP, MP4, ASF, Real Video formats and WMV.
The phone has 55 MB internal memory and comes with a 8GB bundled card to store your music and videos. 8.1 megapixel camera is capable of taking full HD pictures and videos.
The camera has features like face detection, geo-tagging and picture stabilizer.
The battery of the phone has talk time of about 13 hours and 15.8 days of standby time. Additional features include accelerometer, PictBridge direct printing, radio data service (RDS), flash light, built-in stereo speakers, aGPS
Included accessories with the phone are a desk charger and Bluetooth headset.
Razzle Dazzle:
The Sony Ericsson Aino (pronounced as ‘iknow’) looks very attractive with the all black exterior and the black screen. You also have an option of white color but we got the black one in our test centers. The phone doesn’t have any physical buttons on the face which is the sexiest part of the phone. But there is a numeric slideout keypad which does make this phone a bit thick.
Inside Dope:
We caught ourselves drooling at the phone when it arrived at our test centers. It doesn’t have any keys below the display and this makes it look very sleek. We thought this was a touch screen phone but then we were disappointed with two things, firstly the touch screen feature is there but it can be only used for multi media and secondly the phone has a slide out numeric keypad at the bottom of the screen which makes the phone a bit thick. But we won’t forgive Sony for not making this all touch screen interface. If there is hardware in place why not use it for all applications?
The phone has gorgeous 3.0 inch display which has a resolution of 432×240 pixels and supports 16.7 million colors. The display is quite vibrant and the text, photographs and videos are all very good on this screen. The phone has touch screen interface but it is reserved only for the phone’s 3D media browser. Touching the phone and flicking through the capacitive touch screen is smooth.
When you open the phone to access the numeric keypad the touch screen pretends it doesn’t exist. Yes, the touch screen stops responding when you open up the phone so you will have to access your multi media files with the phone closed. Apart from music, you can access camera, video player, FM radio and photo gallery with the phone closed, through the touch screen.
Below the display of the phone is a typical of Sony Ericsson numeric keypad. It has two soft buttons, call and call end keys, a four way navigational dial pad with the OK button in the centre and a shortcut key. You can pair up the navigational buttons to bring up four applications of your choice. The keypad is a bit cramped but it is not that uncomfortable to type on these keys. The short cut key relates to a few applications that are most often used on the phone.
On the side of the phone there a single jack for putting in your head set and charger. We have been complaining a lot about such ports and it is time Sony Ericsson dumped such proprietary ports and use the mini-USB charger port. We would also like a discrete 3.5 mm phone jack to plug in our own set of head phones. An absence of such a jack might prove to be a deal breaker on this music centered phone.
The phone comes with a sleek charging stand for your desktop and it also works as a syncing dock. The phone rests comfortably sideways on the stand and you can use it to watch movies/videos on the phone for hands free experience. You also get a Bluetooth headset bundled in with the phone and you can charge that too with the stand provided.
The phone has a 1000 memory phone book for storing your contacts and a single entry can take up to seven numbers, company name, e-mail address, URL, postal address and notes. If you ever run out of this space you can revert to the SIM card for additional 250 storage memory. You can make groups and put your contacts in it, you can pair them up with a photo that you take in the camera and you can also assign a unique ring tone to a contact. The phone comes built in with 30 polyphonic ring tones and eight tones for message alert but you can always use tracks from your MP3 collection as ring tones.
Other features on the phone include vibrate mode, speakerphone, text and multimedia messaging, alarm clock, flashlight, calculator, timer, stopwatch, notepad and tasks list.
The phone would be great for gamming owing to its big screen. There are just two games like Quadrapop and Crazy Penguin but you can buy more if you want.
The phone is made mainly for music enthusiasts who are willing to shell out for a smart phone but don’t want to spend on a separate PMP. We would have said that the phone is good replacement for your iPod had there been a 3.5 mm phone jack. But Sony Ericsson refuses to give what you want so either you live with it or go some other way.
Other than this the music player is quite good, it has features like equalizer, play lists, clear bass, stereo widening, shuffle and repeat modes and airplane mode. Music player has to be the best part of the phone you can simply flick through the icons and choose the tracks that you want. There are lots of visualizations to choose from and there are equalizer settings. You can assign modes to tracks with the SenseMe feature. The phone also supports the shake feature that lets you shuffle the songs just by shaking the phone vigorously. The phone also has a built in FM but you need the headset to listen to use it. The headset has a built in antenna for the FM radio.
Other advanced features include POP3/IMAP4 e-mail connectivity, USB mass storage, Wi-Fi, voice recorder, PC syncing, instant messenger, lots of Bluetooth profiles and file manager.
Music quality was really good when we used the wired head set and the speaker phone quality too exceeded our expectations. We have never seen such great sound quality for music on a speaker phone.
Supported video formats for the mobile phone are MP4, ASF, WMV and 3GP. The video quality just like the music is awesome and watching videos on the big screen was really great. You can also put up the player on the stand given to watch videos. The phone comes with 55 MB internal memory but there is an 8 GB card bundled in with the phone. The memory card is not hot swappable and it is located behind the cover of the battery.
Aino’s Remote Play feature you can get access to the files that you have on your Sony PS3 wirelessly.
After the music and video player comes the biggest feature, the 8.1 mega pixel camera. After testing the camera we must say this phone can replace your mid range digicam. The Nokia N86 too had a 8 mega pixel camera but we found the camera short of 8 MP rated performance. There is little to complain about the quality of this camera, it takes great pictures and also has a power full flash.
You can take pictures in five resolutions the highest being full HD16:9. Other features include flash, self timer, auto focus, macro focus and geotagging. There is an infinite focus mode that takes pictures without the auto focus for long distance pictures. There is also face detection feature that focuses on the face in the frame when taking pictures.
The phone was superb for video quality. There are three resolutions for shooting in motion – 4:3 for MMS, 16:9 for HD and VGA. There are features like LED light, night mode, image stabilizer and microphone. Images and video quality is the best we have ever seen in a camera phone.
When we tested this high end music smart phone for call quality we didn’t have anything to complain about. Our friends could hear us clearly and we could hear the quite well too. There was no distortion and no call cuts during conversations. Call quality is as good as landline phones.
We expected this phone to perform well in speakerphone test since it had impressed us a lot in music quality. As we expected the speakerphone turned out to be better than other phones that we have tested. Usual background noise existed but still this phone stands out in speakerphone quality.
The battery of the phone has enough juice for 13 hours of talk time and 15.8 days for stand by time.
Nitty Gritty:
Sony Ericsson Aino is a mixed bag, it has this great touch screen interface but it is only for music. The phone in unlocked which means it is expensive. The music player and camera quality all are great but we will advice you to looks somewhere else, looking at the price.
