I needed a phone with a large screen, but had a normal keypad, not a qwerty one. Given the plethera of touchscreens which are all the rage, I had no choice but to buy a second hand phone and eventually settled for a SE Aino.
So what's the Aino like? Overall, it's typical Sony Ericsson. The phone part is good, with usually clear reception and able to hear the other person without static, unless you're in a black spot. The software is stable (so far) and there are many applications you can upload. I've already uploaded a few myself.
The Good:
- Large clear screen.
- Large clear clock on said screen.
- Good telephony.
- Good photos.
- Quality build.
- Nice dock, although a bit cheapish.
- Included Bluetooth headset, which has fancy LED lights.
- Calculator- at last SE has changed the way the "+", "-", "/" and "*" buttons are arranged and made it slightly less cumbersome. Still far to go before it reaches proper user friendliness but better than the ones installed for the past few years.
- Music quality is good when I attach my headphones to it. )not the bluetooth ones)
- Plenty of multimedia options.
The not so Good:
- The sound through the supplied Bluetooth headset is quite lacking is bass and depth (unless I haven't been using it correctly). I was quite surprised by this. SE usually supplies good quality headsets, at least in terms of sound.
- The touchscreen is sometimes non responsive.
- Yet at the same time, sometimes after I take it out of my pocket, I find the touchscreen on and it is playing the music player through external speakers, or sometimes the camera is on.
- The camera has only basic features. Can't do multi shot, change shutter sound, change the option to use touchscreen to take photos (on the Satio, you can) or much else. Also no editing of photo (besides rotation), cropping, or even changing the review time of taken photo.
- The video taken by the camera is jerky.
- The sliding action causes the back of the screen to rub against and scratch the buttons (same thing happened with other SE sliders too)
- Keypad buttons bit small.
- When you receive a sms it only tells you you have received a sms, it doesn't tell you who it is from until you slide open the phone.
- Writing and sending sms's still requires double pressing, so to speak. ie press "continue", the press "send"..I mean guys...why have "continue"? Just have "send" and be done with it! Even Motorola, King of user unfriendly and backwards OS's makes it single press, instead of two or three.
- Lacks the customiseablity of some brands. For example, you can't move icons around when you go to the main menu, or in your message folder, you can't move different folders into a particular order you'd prefer.
I've only had the phone for a week, so I'm sure more good and not so good things will pop up. Nevertheless, I find the phone quite useable though I think most of the touchscreen functions are not very useful overall. The touchscreen aspect seems gimmicky. Luckily most of it is not touchscreen, the screen is large, and it works. For those who are not into touchscreen phones, it's worth looking at.
27th December 2010
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I lost my Aino a month or two after my review and went through a few mobile phones, like the SE Hazel, Zylo, Hazel again, and finally bought the Aino again a few weeks ago, because I couldn't handle a small screen anymore.
I'm not sure why, but this time I really like the Aino. I got the white one this time, and love the looks. All the quirky things about being part touchscreen part normal keypad phone seem to work well.
The Good:
1. You can instantly see the time by pressing the keylock button on the top of the phone- it's a long narrow button which looks more like a style design or back cover attachment than a button, until you see the tiny imprint of a key on it. The size of the clock is large, making it easy to see.
2. Large screen
3. Looks great!
4. loud speaker is on teh bottom side of the phone, not the back cover area. This means putting the phone flat on its back will not muffle the sound when the phoen rings or you receive a sms alert.
The not so good:
1. Software bugs.
a) viewing photos- sometimes as you flick from one pic to the next, it will skip several photos, or even go back to the last one taken.
b) twice- when rotating photos, it rotates 180 degrees instead of 90degrees, meaning you have to do another whole lot of rotations if you missed the desired orientation.
c) a couple of others bugs, but too sleepy to type them out.
2. Camera is slow. Saving a photo take about 5 seconds, and it will always show the last photo for reviewing- can't go straight to take photo agin. This means no quick photo action.