We first mentioned the Aino back in May this year and also mentioned a Q4 2009 release date at that time. After a few months of not hearing much at all about the phone we now hear from dialaphone that the Sony Ericsson Aino is still due to launch within the next few months. Information is still a little vague at the moment, but its good to see more information about the phone being revealed along with another picture.
The Sony Aino is a phone that combines 2 of Sony's strengths in to 1 device. That is an 8 megapixel cybershot camera along with the walkman. The camera side of the device see's it have a fairly large sensor along with autofocus, an LED flash, geotagging, touch focus and face detection to name a few things.
The walkman side of the phone offers great quality sound and has some great looking graphics to represent the sound also.
The phone menu system is very similar in looks to the XMB found on the PSP and PlayStation 3. This isn't just by chance however as the phone actually integrates well with the PS3 and allows users to access, control and stream media content from their PS3 to the Aino. MediaGo is also included that also allows you to access multimedia content stored on your PC over a Wi-Fi network.
Finally, the Sony Aino also has the ability to let you watch, record and pause live TV streams on the phone. It's quite an impressive feature set although unfortunately it doesn't have a standard headphone jack although the earphones supplied should give a fairly decent sound quality.
Looks wise, there isn't anything too special about the phone but it does look quite sleek covered in a large screen.
Sony Aino Rumoured Specs
Back in May we came across these specs for the phone and they seem to fall inline with what we see and what we have heard over at Dialaphone.
* 8.1 megapixel camera
* 6x digital zoom
* Image and video stabilizer
* Bluetooth stereo (A2DP)
* Phone memory up to 55MB
* Screen 16,777,216 True Colour TFT
* Resolution 240 x 432 pixels
Pricing and an official launch date should be available soon due to the Q4 launch approaching soon.