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Had the Aino for about 48 hours now, and been examining all the features that are important to me. I decided to post it now because it's already quite long, and it seems I can just keep on finding stuff to write. So here's my feedback to the community and SE.

I'm very pleased with the sound quality of the headset when listening to mp3 files via the walkman player. The equalizer options are very nice as well. No big surprise there, nothing beats SE regarding music playback. But I'm slightly disappointed that I can't select an equalizer setting for the radio and/or internet streams. It might be possible with internet streams that are accessible from within the walkman, but I cannot know since I'm unable to add music-feeds. I guess that option is restricted to users of Media-Go, for whatever reason. So I'll just settle for listening to RTSP URL's from my browser bookmarks. :-/
Sound quality when talking on the phone is absolutely rubbish when using the headset. Far too much noise. Much better without the headset.

A great feature with the headset though, is that it knows you don't need it when it's charging. When you disconnect it from the charger, it automatically connects to the phone again. That's great.

Pictures/videos taken are saved with the filename DSC00001.JPG, DSC00002.JPG or MOV00001.MP4 etc. But when you clear the memory-card to make room for next bunch of pictures/videos, filenames doesn't continue from where it left of. Instead it restarts at DSC00001.JPG. That's not good when you come home and wants to copy the pictures into the same folder, which I normally do. Now I'm forced to sort the pictures right away, and I find that annoying.

I'm not stunned by the picture quality, but didn't expect to be either. I'll just say that I'm satisfied with the picture quality, and it's great to finally be able to record videos in VGA resolution with my SE phone. Been waiting for such a feature for a long time. However, my Nokia N82 handles video recording much better, and that's just sad.
First of all, SE claims the Aino records at 30 fps? No way. N82 records much smoother. The absense of super strong bright light makes the Aino drop the framerate while giving dark pictures with horizontal flicker lines. The N82 records fine and gives bright pictures in the exact same environment. Sound is also better on the N82. Sadly I must keep my opinion that nothing beats the Nokia regarding picture and video recording quality, and that's REALLY sad, because VGA video recording was one of the main reasons I got the Aino...
(The N82 also gives the files a much better name, like yyyymmdd.mp4).

Slightly disappointed that the walkman player stops playing music when I want to take a picture. Come on... W800 would do that. What happened?

The touch-part seemed very unstable to me at first. Twice I had to reboot the phone to make the touch-part work again, because it simply froze and didn't respond to anything. (Only the touch-part froze, the rest of the phone still worked). After switching to a more light-weight theme, I haven't experienced any problems with the touch-part. It works quite alright, although not as good as e.g. Android devices, but fairly good, and actually better than I expected. You have to get used to it though.

Being used to W760, the Aino is much better for SMS. W760 was simply unacceptable, slow and annoying. The Aino is faster and the buttons are much better, although they *could* have been slightly bigger or have more space around them. It's a bit annoying that the key/character relation has changed since W760 (where space and the dot is etc). It's now closer to the Nokia key/character relation. So annoying to have to get used to that now, but better in the future I guess, when wanting to try out another brand.
It could just be my imagination, but I also feel the T9 in Aino is much better at guessing what word I need. Quite often the W760 would give me words I rarely used, meaning I had to scroll down to the right word. I don't see that happening with the Aino.

I'm running Linux, so the Media Go application isn't for me. But it's great that you can select in the phone that you're using Linux, so that it mounts your memory card instead, when plugging it onto the docking station.
However, this functionality isn't working that well for me on Ubuntu. Whenever I connect, it complains about problems mounting the device - but seems to do it anyway.
"Unable to mount Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB Sony Ericsson U10. Error initializing camera: -60: Could not lock the device"
Browsing the Image folder is dead slow though, and when I try to unmount the device again I'm constantly told that I can't because there are files open, even though I didn't click any files. And I can't seem to copy anything to the card either, so I think it's safe to assume that it simply doesn't mount properly.
But there's another option for the USB connection: Mount as media only. This doesn't do anything for me though. Nothing is mounted.
Any advice on this issue would be appreciated, since it's kinda annoying having to pull out the memory card instead of just connecting to the docking station. (Bluetooth is too slow I think, and I don't have WiFi, and I'm not getting WiFi either).
My W760 gives me no such trouble.

I feel that execution of JavaME MIDlets are a bit slow compared to other Sony Ericsson devices. While playing Ukko's Journey, the game halts for split seconds here and there. Having tested Ukko's Journey on about 20 different devices and brands (because I made the game), I can say that I haven't experienced such split-second-halts on other devices (including K800, F305, W950, W760, W800, Motorola E1000, Samsung U600 and others).
The vibrator also makes the game halt. Many games use the vibrator as an effect, so it's not good that it halts the game in Aino. (Also happens with other games on the Aino).

Given the odd screen resolution of the Aino, it's completely silly that Sony Ericsson hasn't included the option of setting a certain screen size for MIDlets. This is possible on all other SE devices I've seen, so that you can run e.g. 176x220 pixel sized games on a 240x320 resolution device. Surely we can agree there ought to an option of running 240x320 pixel sized games on the Aino, yes? But apparently SE doesn't think so. This means that most games you install will have a white rectangle at the bottom, sometimes with some "graphic leftovers" from the game. Annoying. I'm strongly counting on SE to include the option of setting a screensize in the next firmware.
(Some games will run fine though, simply center place or fill out the whole screen. This is because the developer has coded the game that way, but not many developers do that).

But a positive thing about applications is, that you can finally tell the phone to never ask your permission when a MIDlet wants to go online. On earlier devices that was only possible with signed applications, but no more! That's really great, and something many people have been longing for.

Since K790/K800 it has been possible to use MIDlets (JavaME applications) as screensavers. But that's always required you to install Over-The-Air by entering the URL to the JAD file. With Aino it's fine to just send the JAR by bluetooth. No big deal though, but having the option of MIDlet screensavers is kinda trendy, and mixed with the new "Don't ever ask me again when this midlet wants to go online" option, I'm thinking that opens up for the possibility of some nice desktop widgets.


I'd like to ask Sony Ericsson to focus on the following things for the next firmware:
- Improve MIDlet execution (e.g. garbage collection shouldn't take more time than a slow Samsung U600 takes)
- Include option of setting a screensize for MIDlets, like in other SE models
- Improve video-recording and insert option to save files as yyyymmdd000.jpg etc.
- Add equalizers for radio and internet streams somehow
- Why are phonecalls noisy when using the headset?

Thanks

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Posted: 2009-10-11 13:43:53
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Nice review with some very good info. Disappointing to read that so far Aino hasn't been too great though! I am still on the fence about this one, so I'll wait for some more impressions just in case. I noticed you didn't say a lot about the regular menus and so on... Is this because they function and look just like any other SE feature phone?
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Posted: 2009-10-11 14:34:54
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Yea, I know I tend to focus on the stuff that annoys me, and forget all the good stuff. The UI is still very nice and fast and one of the main reasons I keep sticking with Sony Ericsson.
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Posted: 2009-10-11 14:38:34
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Why do you need to reorder the photos in your folder on your computer? Just do Sort by>Date taken. I've never had to think about ordering my photos, since the OS even remembers what kind of arrangement you've set for each folder.
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Posted: 2009-10-11 17:24:48
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I want to be able to browse through all my photos from that one folder, but I can't copy over new photos I've taken, because their filename is the same as those already in the folder, so if I copy new photos into my photo-folder, they'll overwrite old photos.

But I thought of some way to prevent it. Maybe if I don't delete the very last photo on the phone, maybe then it'll continue the naming sequence from where it left off. Will have to test.
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Posted: 2009-10-11 18:43:13
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Or you know when you are looking at the memory card, and have the files you could always rename the files to continue the list. Not too hard.
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Posted: 2009-10-11 18:50:07
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Mr. Lou, how is the in-built web browser? Have you tried Opera Mini on the touchscreen?

I'm asking this last question since you're a developer, would it be possible to develop Java apps for the Aino that utilizes the touch functionality?
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Posted: 2009-10-11 20:09:47
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Oooh, right, you're on Linux. In Windows it just asks you whetehr you want to overwrite them or just copy the new file with a (2) added in the name. There's also a checkbox "Do this for all files", which is realy useful.

Sorry to hear that, anyway. Maybe, as the others suggested, just leave out teh last photo so that the phone continues the numbering.
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Posted: 2009-10-11 20:21:40
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I find the built-in browser fine. I've never installed Opera Mini on any of my phones, because I didn't think I had the need. I installed Opera Mini just now in order to be able to answer your question.
Yes, touch works fine with Opera Mini, and since Opera Mini is a JavaME application, that means you can indeed develop JavaME applications that supports touch screen for the Aino.
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Posted: 2009-10-11 21:30:33
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...everytime you transfer your photo's to your PC, just leave out the last photo in your phone.
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Posted: 2009-10-11 22:13:42
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