The Pulse Blog

By: Simon Drew
When you’re on the road with just the internal memory and a microSD card of your mobile multimedia gadget to house the audio and video files you need for an extended trip, there must something better out there.  Enter the Sony Ericsson Aino – the first smartphone to set your free from the confines of these limited storage devices.  You get RemotePlay, a feature no other mobile gadget has that makes your Aino handset a client to your homebound PlayStation 3 acting as a remote file server.  You can then pull off all the multimedia content you’ve put on the PS3 to last you on your extended trip.

At a glance

A Multimedia entertainment bonanza couldn’t get better than with the Aino. Apart from its RemotePlay features, it comes with the Media Go™ function that lets you grab, play and organize all your videos, music and image files from your desktop effortlessly to your Aino via WiFi while charging the handset. It has the Sony media player that supports all the audio and video file formats with built-in MegaBass equalizer function, on-board stereo speakers and Bluetooth A2DP for wireless stereo earphones. Here are the other features of the Aino:





The Aino is a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and a tri-band UMTS/HSPA communications entertainment phone with 3G/HSDPA/HSUPA for fast surfing, chat, emailing and downloading over the internet as well as media streaming from remote PS3 consoles.





Starting with a brilliant 3” TFT LCD touchscreen with 16 million colors, the Aino has a built-in accelerometer that automatically shifts into landscape or portrait viewing with a corresponding handset orientation. Camera: it sports an upscale 8.1 megapixel autofocus and touchfocus camera with 16x digital zoom, LED flash, face and smile detection, image and video stabilizer, geo-tagging and red-eye reduction. It supports near film-grade VGA recording at 25 fps and a 3- fps playback. Internet:  it has the NetFront browser that supports YouTube and Webfeeds and Google search from standby. There’s an updated Media Player 3.0 that supports all the known audio and video codecs currently popular in the market.





Internal phone memory is at 55Mb which can be expanded up to 16GB using its microSD slot.





Battery life is decent allowing  13 hours of talking and 30 days of standby time with 31 hours of continuous music listening.









Conclusion



The Sony Ericsson Aino will come in two colors: Obsidian black and Luminous White.  It should arrive in the UK markets this October in a sales package that include a colour-coordinated Sony Ericsson MH100 Bluetooth stereo earphone, an 8GB SanDisk microSD card and a matching EC100 charging stand as its major accessories.  This undoubtedly adds more value to a highly capable touchscreen slider that’s already a great value to start with.