Sony Ericsson Aino deals & review

The Sony Ericsson Aino is good mid-range handset aimed at a fairly niche market – those who buy this will probably be attracted by its innovative PS3 connectivity rather than its prowess as a phone. However, it does offer decent bang for your buck, with a good spec and a number of interesting features. It’s now available to buy unlocked, so it’ll work with your network of choice.

Physically, the Aino continues in the classic Sony Ericsson tradition with a strongly geometric shape. The slide-out physical keyboard features square keys in the standard (non-QWERTY) mobile layout, and the 3-inch screen is big enough to provide a clear view of what you’re doing. The chassis of the phone is relatively sparse, especially in comparison to the oft-compared Sony Ericsson Satio, though it does offer the useful volume control rocker on the right-hand side. At 134g, the Aino is a pleasantly weighty handset that feels solid and durable.

However, the key aspect of this phone’s design is its dual-life as a touchscreen phone and also a regular keypad handset. While the Aino’s long screen is highly usable and responsive to touch, when you slide out the physical keyboard, the screen becomes unresponsive and the phone reverts to a classic, non-touch handset, where you’ll have to navigate your way around the menus using arrow buttons. This might appeal to phone traditionalists looking for a handset with conventional arrow-button navigation, as there aren’t many about these days. However, the choice to make the touchscreen effectively die when the keyboard is slid out is an odd one, and only serves to infuriate those who would like to use both the screen and the keyboard.

The Aino’s features are really where this handset stands out. It offers the usual niceties of course: an 8.1MP camera with autofocus, LED flash and face detection; Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G; and storage capacity of 55MB, which can expand to 32GB with the use of a microSD card. It also has some more swanky offerings, such as an FM radio and assisted GPS with geo-tagging. All in all, some decent features - but this phone’s greatest attribute lies in its PS3 connectivity. While this isn’t the PSP phone that so many still hope for, it does offer some unique appeal to Sony gamers. With the Sony Ericsson Aino, you can turn your PS3 on and off using your phone, and connect to it via Wi-Fi or 3G. Although you can’t actually play your games over this connection, you can view videos and other media stored on the PS3.

The phone’s performance is actually a little disappointing. It seems to struggle with running multiple applications – if you receive a message while running the music player, the current song will actually stop while your phone works at processing the incoming mail. However, it does offer a strong 8.5 hours of talk time, which is comparatively high, and in some ways is still a very impressive gadget – the assisted GPS loads up in a flash, and targets your location within about 10 seconds.

The Sony Ericsson Aino’s usability is a bit hit-and-miss. On the plus side, long-time users of Sony phones will be pleased to hear that the interface is essentially the same as it has been on Sony Ericsson phones for almost a decade. However, the phone’s menus often seem convoluted and badly-designed. A lot of key features – including the PS3 ‘Remote Play’ feature - need hunting down, and are hidden within sub-menus. However, the phone does offer some very cool applications, including a great little game called Crazy Penguin, and the Bluetooth connection is excellent – probably some of the best audio quality you’ll hear in a phone of this level, and it stays connected even when the phone is metres away from the headphone adaptor.

The most obvious competitor to this phone is the Sony Ericsson Satio, which will also appeal to users looking for that classic Sony Ericsson interface. The Satio is a better all-rounder, with more memory, a better camera and a better screen, but it lacks the Aino’s PS3 connectivity. Users who are more interested in the modern phone essentials might want to look into the mid-level smartphone market, such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 where they’ll find alternative apps for most of the Aino’s best features, though again, not its PS3 connectivity.