Sony Mobile Evangelist

We were very excited about the Sony Ericsson Yari when we started the review. The camera-tracked gesture control combined with accelerometer action is a move in the right direction for gaming – just look at the sales of the Nintendo Wii compared to PlayStation 3 for example (and the Wii just uses an accelerometer-enabled controller, it can’t do the camera gesture trick).
But the more advanced of the two preinstalled games – Tennis – has the equivalent to two buttons for control – one to press and release to serve and another to press when the game prompts you to hit the ball. While using the camera instead of physical buttons is impressive, the game itself is simpler than Guitar Hero – and you don’t get Rock Band style multiplayer fun either.
And the primary camera was quite a surprise – an unpleasant surprise. From the makers of impressive Cybershot cameraphones, not tweaking the camera contrast is a major blunder. The weak signal reception and poor keypad mean that the Yari doesn’t do so well as a phone either. And what’s with the gaming keys that have such limited use?
But there were some high points – the Sony Ericsson Yari could easily live up to the Walkman series name, though it isn’t officially part of that range. And SatNav navigation for feature phones is hard to come by, even if you’re willing to pay for it. The push email support is a great feature, though we would have liked a preinstalled IM client too.
The Sony Ericsson Yari is not a very expensive phone so maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on it – after all, it offers a great package for the price.