The Sony Ericsson Aino is a handset that promises the best of both worlds – a full touch multimedia player, combined with a slick and slender mobile phone – without any compromises.

Certainly looking the part with a great design, top flight specs including an 8 megapixel camera and innovations like Remote Play media connectivity to the Playstation 3, the Aino makes a few strange choices which prevent us from recommending it wholeheartedly.

Design and specs

The Sony Ericsson Aino is a beautifully designed phone, the gunmetal grey finish and minimalist styling around an expansive 3-inch display makes for an appealing handset that takes more than a few design cues from the Japanese gadget manufacturer – the right phone to tout connectivity with the Playstation 3.

When closed, the Aino is devoid of face buttons and acts exclusively as a media player, with the touchscreen springing to life and presenting media shortcuts that are also visually reminiscent of Sony’s gaming platforms. Movies, music, pictures and FM radio are all one press away, whilst a vivid menu transports you between options...if a little awkwardly.

The bundled dock acts as a fine stand for the media-savvy device, doubling as a connection to the PC (only, no luck for Mac owners) and allowing fast transfer of files as well as purchases from Sony’s PlayNow Arena.

However, the absence of a 3.5mm headphone jack in a device was frustrating in the Sony Ericsson Satio, but is simply unforgivable in a such a multimedia-driven device such as this. Bluetooth support is a small consolation, but the use of Sony’s proprietary port is a real hindrance on the Aino.

The strangest decision is that all of the phone’s touchscreen functionality is only available whilst the handset is in media mode, whilst sliding the keypad out takes the Aino firmly into vanilla phone territory where d-pad presses and predictive text entry are the only way to go, even for browsing the web.

A flick of the slide unveils a full 12-button keypad, turning the phone into an oddly long device due to the screen’s widescreen dimensions switching to portrait, with touch controls nowhere to be seen. A great opportunity for convergence in the Aino is missed here, especially as phones such as the Samsung Tocco Ultra managed to provide a combination of touch and physical typing with little compromise.

The Sony Ericsson Aino does still perform well as a conventional handset, an 8.1 megapixel camera with autofocus and an LED flash and 8GB of memory (via an SD card) making for a strong, if otherwise unremarkable, device. The camera records VGA video at 30 frames a second and...well, that's about it really. 

The interface is familar Sony Ericsson with threaded messages, TrackID, and the usual suite of features.

Calling and connectivity

Connectivity is the key to the Aino, and the much-vaunted Playstation 3 connectivity is its main focus. Remote Play, the ability to view content from Playstation 3 remotely which debuted on the PSP, is present on the Aino. The ability to watch content from the home console via 3G and Wi-Fi is a great idea in theory, but the reality is far more.

Firstly, any hope of getting it working over 3G can be ruled out for a start. Trying to connect to the home PS3 was a complete non-starter, let alone playing back content. Wi-Fi was better, with the ability to bring up my console’s XMB with a little coercion. There was however, a significant lag between button presses and action on the PS3, and using the keypad horizontally (there is no touch support so the keys are required) made option selections very fiddly.

Taking the Playstation high-res interface and scaling it down to the Aino's relatively small display made it a bit of a challenge to read menu options and choose the right files at speed.

Movies and music did indeed play back, as did content from a USB drive connected to the PS3, but all were fairly pixellated and often with audio falling out of sync with the on-screen action.

Some options were off-limits for the Remote Play service, including games and access to Playstation Home. A unfortunate casualty is the VidZone jukebox, which has a selection of hundreds of the latest and greatest music videos.

The potential for a Spotify-rivalling streaming music service was there for the taking, and whether an issue of playback licensing rights or a technical setback, a lack of support for VidZone on a mobile is another addition to our growing list of disappointments.

All in all, the PS3 playback is not the portable media monster that it was touted as, but it does work after a fashion, and hopefully will be improved and rolled out on more Sony Ericsson phones in the future.

As a phone, however, the Aino is much better with calls clear, texting straightforward, and connectivity abound with GPS, Bluetooth, 3G and Wi-Fi all present and correct.

The traditional Sony Ericsson browser is on board, and the lack of support is just odd as the Aino does its best non-touch phone impression and wasting that gorgeous capacitive screen.

Verdict

The Sony Ericsson Aino makes attempts to appeal as both a mobile phone and a media player, but the integration of both is so jarring as to prove hard going for users. 

The landscape-heavy multimedia experience is entirely divorced from the normal phone functionality, making it a tough transition when moving from one to the other. The Sony Ericsson Aino is fine as far as a traditional handset is concerned, with an impressive camera and decent design making for an appealing, if unremarkable phone.

Whilst admirable in attempting to innovate, the functionality as a media player proves somewhat lacking, and to constrain touch support only to this portion of the phone leaves it decidedly hamstrung when browsing the web.

An ambitious effort but lacking in execution, the Sony Ericsson Aino will do little to change the minds of the suits of Sony Japan that a Playstation Phone is anything but a bad idea...