Sony Ericsson very kindly lent me their new Entertainment Unlimited branded phone called the Aino over the festive season and so I thought I would finally share with you my thoughts on it. To make things simple I have broken it down into my likes and dislikes. Likes: Firstly the Aino has a fab 3” hi-res touch screen, when the slider is closed the touch screen works very well allowing you to easily browse pictures, music, movies or radio. The keyboard and user interface are up the usual easy and logical to use Sony Ericsson standards. The phone also comes with a nice built in 8GB  Micro SD card, great Bluetooth headphones (great speakerphone too) and a very neat charging dock. It was also very easy to connect up to my laptop and sync all the contacts as well as working great as a mobile modem (wireless or wired took only a few minutes to set up). I didn’t get a chance to try out the Playstation 3 remote play feature, I’m more of an Xbox chap, but this feature allows you to stream music and films stored on your PS3 wirelessly to your Aino anywhere in the world !. Finally the Aino is also remarkably durable, after a couple of months heavy use it doesn’t even have a scratch on it.  Dislikes: The only slight problem with this phone is that the touch screen is for some reason deactivated when you slide out the keypad. Every person I showed it to tried to use the touch screen to navigate from around the menu, including me the first time. I guess once you know though you soon forget about it, but still think its a bit odd. The only other problem was when I first had the phone the software was very buggy, however after a week I updated it and now it’s been behaving nicely. Overall: A great phone if you want to get a touch screen / number keypad smart cellphone. The camera works well (see pics above) and as an entertainment unlimited phone I can honestly say its lives up to its name. More apps are constantly being released and the phone comes pre-loaded with facebook, Google maps and a nice selection of games. For full stats see below: Aino Touch Phone Specs

• 3 inch widescreen 16:9 touch screen and slide out Keypad
• 8.1 megapixel camera with Photo flash and intuitive touch focus, Video VGA 25fps
• Bluetooth™ stereo A2DP portable headphones included with docking base for phone/headphones
• 55MB Phone memory and 8GB MicroSD memory card included
• Remote Play for PLAYSTATION®3, Exchange ActiveSync®
• A-GPS with Google Maps™
• 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi, (Quad-band GPRS/EDGE and tri-band HSDPA)
• Talk Time: 13 hours, Standby time: 380 hours
• Dimensions: 104 x 50 x 15.5 mm, Weight: 134.0g
• PlayNow™ arena and Track id, Built in Step Counter and GPS tracker
• DLNA Certified™ (connect wirelessly to other electronic devices via Wi-Fi. i.e: See your photos on your TV)
• Media Go: Transfer your files from PC to phone wirelessly & automatically when docked (using Wi-Fi)

Sony Ericsson’s global Hopper Invasion campaign is well underway and thought it about time to give you an update on it (I first wrote about it here). The campaign promotes their new Entertainment Unlimited range of phones, namely the Satio, Aino and Yari. It all started a few months ago with a teaser site allowing people to create their own personalised online hoppers and a promo video showing 500 hoppers being let loose in Barcelona. They then did an online flash mob by taking over the yahoo.co.uk site for an afternoon using the personalised hoppers created by users online. (click here to see that) Next they created a fun interactive concept using twitter (with a unique hashtag), a warehouse full of deflated hoppers hooked up to pumps, and a dedicated website showing live video feeds from the warehouse. The general idea is that each time anyone on twitter types #pumpt the tweet is picked up at the warehouse and a hopper is given a burst of air in real time, all visible on the hopper website. The warehouse will stop pumping up hoppers on the 6th December and in the meantime Sony Ericsson are asking participants to tweet ideas for what to do with them. They will then pick the best one and make it happen. So far its becoming a great success, over 240,000 online hoppers have been created, and after just 7 days over 400 hoppers in the warehouse have been pumped up, and the #pumpt hash tag has been a trending topic on twitter. To follow the Hopper campaign on twitter click here, or to see the hopper live feed click here. (They also have nice Facebook and Picasa profiles set up)

According to Dave Hilton, UK marketing director at Sony Ericsson there is “clearly a desire to freshen up our advertising”. One of the ideas is to add several more colour options to its logo, which traditionally has been a silver and green sphere since 2001. New colours will include pink, blue, orange and purple. The new logo colours will only be part of the companies latest, biggest yet £8m ad campaign to promote its upcoming Entertainment Unlimited phone and service offerings, namely the Satio, Aino and Yari handsets as well as its PlayNow music- and film-download service. Their last big branding makeover was the incredibly successful “ I Love* Sony Ericsson”, where the Love* was the Sony Ericsson logo (see fun example below). That campaign helped to increase Sony Ericsson’s market share by 15% as well as increasing profits by over 100% in 6 months and was done by the Wolff Olins agency. Sony Ericsson UK is also currently finalising a campaign due to launch next month, which will offer consumers who buy certain handsets the opportunity to win tickets to next year’s football World Cup, which takes place here in South Africa. Hat tip: Marketing Magazine

  Sony Ericsson just confirmed their new line up of phones for later this year. The two main phones of interest that got me very exited are the Satio (pictured above) and the Aino (click here for the write up). The Satio was up till now known as the Idou (no idea why they changed the name). The Satio is going to be the flagship phone for Sony Ericsson’s new Entertainment Unlimited brand. The brand basically takes the best features of the Walkman series of phones and the Cyber-shot series and brings them together as well as incorporating some serious work and gaming capabilities. I have always loved Sony Ericsson phones and am so glad they are using a Symbian operating system on this phone that has been styled to work the same as the normal Sony Ericsson interface. Also because its Symbian there will be a ton of 3rd party apps already available at launch (Approx August) Satio Touch Phone Specs

• 3.5 inch widescreen 16:9 touch screen (16 million colours, 360×640 pixel)
• 12.1-megapixel camera with Xenon flash and intuitive touch focus
• VGA movie recording at 30fps
• MicroSD memory card slot
• Symbian S60 5th Edition OS
• Bluetooth A2DP (Bluetooth music streaming)
• A-GPS
• Exchange ActiveSync®
• 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi, ( and quad-band GPRS/EDGE)
• Google Maps™ with turn by turn navigation
• Dimensions: 112 × 55 x 13.3 mm,  Weight 126 grams
• PlayNow™ arena and Track id
• USB and TV-out
• Available in Red, Black and Silver

  No word yet on the amount of talk time or built in memory (will update as soon as I know) but we have been told it will ship with an 8GB Micro SD card included in the box as well as a charger stand. Watch the promo video below for more shots of the phone. (click here for more info on the Satio from the SE website)

  This is the second addition to Sony Ericsson’s new Entertainment Unlimited brand and I think it just might have have gone to the top spot on my gadget wish list. Its called the Aino (not sure they thought that name through very well) and is a 3” touch screen phone with a slide down Keypad. The Aino is the first Sony Ericsson phone to team up with the Playstation brand and will work with your PS3. The feature is called Remote play, it allows you to connect to your PS3 from anywhere around the globe as long as you have either Wi-Fi or 3G internet access. When connected you can access all the music and video on your PS3’s hard drive as well as being able to control the PlayTV function (If activated in your country), this allows you to play pause and record TV from your PS3 ! The Phone also comes as standard with A2DP wireless Bluetooth headphones (with a 3.5mm headphone socket) as pictures above and a rather neat horizontal charging deck for the phone and headphones (see video below). Aino Touch Phone Specs

• 3 inch widescreen 16:9 touch screen and slide out Keypad
• 8.1 megapixel camera with Photo flash and intuitive touch focus
• Bluetooth™ stereo A2DP
• Video VGA 25fps
• Stereo Speakerphone
• 55MB Phone memory and MicroSD memory card slot
• Remote Play for PLAYSTATION®3
• A-GPS with Google Maps™
• Exchange ActiveSync®
• 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi, (Quad-band GPRS/EDGE and tri-band HSDPA)
• Talk Time: 13 hours, Standby time: 380 hours
• Dimensions: 104 x 50 x 15.5 mm, Weight: 134.0g
• PlayNow™ arena and Track id
• Built in Step Counter and GPS tracker
• DLNA Certified™ (connect wirelessly to other electronic devices via Wi-Fi. i.e: See your photos on your TV)
• Media Go: Transfer your files from PC to phone wirelessly & automatically when docked (using Wi-Fi)
• Horizontal charging deck for Phone and Headphones included in box

  The Aino (really that name is crazy) will be available in black or white near the end of 2009.