It seems I can finally bring a preview of the Aino for you guys. Sorry it’s taken so long. Been rather busy and just recently I was lucky enough to catch a dose of swine flu, which I’m still recovering from. Anyway, that’s not particularly interesting, so let’s move right along!

The Aino is another installment of the Entertainment Unlimited umbrella, and it positions itself somewhere in between the very high-end Satio (U1) and the mid/high-end Yari (U100).

At first glance the Aino seems to be a full touch screen device without any physical keys on the front – which is also correct, some of the time anyway. The thing is that it’s got a slide-out keypad as well, which transforms the phone into a regular feature phone when opened. I’m not particularly sure whether I like this solution or not as it’s got both cons and pros. The obvious benefit is that you can achieve a much larger screen and in some areas also a more pleasing design. One horrible downside of things, however, is that it adds to the size of the handset. In the case of the Aino, I think it adds to much length to the device and almost makes it uncomfortable to use when opened. Ai-no (got it?) that’s not what you expected to hear, sorry!

Now, like I said the screen size is one of the benefits. It’s a 3-inch TFT touch screen using capacitive technology. Yep, that’s right – capacitive. This means that it’s more responsive than the touch screen on, say, the Satio. In theory anyway. Personally I haven’t noticed much difference, but I honestly don’t care if I have to press just a bit harder, as long as it has nothing to do with the quality of the image on the display. The resolution is an ackward 240 x 432 pixels. Ackward because the A2 platform used in the Aino wasn’t originally developed for this resolution, making some areas of the user interface look a bit odd. At least if you’ve previously used another handset running the same platform but on a QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) resolution screen.

Other than that the display is quite good, capable of rendering beautiful colours with good contrast. It’s really quite sharp too!

I’d like to touch upon media on the Aino, but I must say that I’m doing it with mixed thougts. You’ve got both the landscape, touch-enabled media interface and the portrait/landscape non-touch media interface in the Aino. What’s up with this?! I’d much rather have just one, and I’d prefer if it was a mix of both. I’d like a touch-enabled version of the traditional A2 media interface, just like on the Satio. In my opinion that would have been much better than having to switch between various interfaces, each with a different set of buttons, shortcuts and features. Sorry, but I just don’t think there’s a need for two different interfaces with similar content on the same device.

Like I said, the user interface isn’t developed for this resolution and if you’ve previously used another handset running the same platform but with a QVGA resolution screen, you’ll definitely notice this. Some things, such as the activity menu, haven’t been redone to make use of the added 112 pixels in height. In other areas they’ve done what seems to be patchwork, i.e. made the space between icons in the main menu a bit greater and in the calendar they’ve added a small image at the top to replace space that would have else been empty.

With regards to user friendliness, it’s the same as every other A2 handset. Very easy to get going with and most people will know how to use it in a matter of minutes. Visually speaking, it’s not a bad user interface but not the prettiest either, especially considering the options opened by the added – yet partly disabled – touch screen. And yes, the touch screen does not work with any of the preloaded applications or features when you’re using the phone opened.

The camera features an 8-megapixel image sensor and it sports autofocus as well. Brilliant! There’s also a small LED to light up the dark areas. I’ve got to say that its power is a bit limited though. When it comes to image quality, the Aino is much improved over the C905 and W995, both of which also feature an 8-megapixel camera. There’s less noise and edges are better refined with more detail and contrast. Colours are good too, although a bit pale at times. I’ve noticed that it takes forever to save pictures and I’ve also experienced a rather annoying bug which either closes the camera application once the picture is taken or completely freezes the phone, in which case it’s not even possible to restart it using the power button!

Videos can be recorded at a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 pixels (VGA), which by the way is the same as the Satio and Yari. The video quality is all right, but it’s definitely way better on the Satio.

I have yet to properly give the web browser a go, but it’s been redone so I thought I’d mention that as well. It seems like it’s mostly an improvement of the user interface, which has indeed been revamped. It’s a darn shame that it doesn’t support the touch screen. You’ll have to use the new Opera Mini 5 beta for that! I don’t like the fact that I cannot use the web browser with the slider closed, because the phone then goes to the touch-enabled media interface – how stupid is that?

There you have it – a few words on the Aino. I hope I can publish a review of this phone some time this month, but I won’t make any promises. Still working on the review of Satio, which is taking more time than I expected because I want it to cover most aspects of the phone. Also, I have to admit that I don’t particularly like Aino as a phone. The whole touch/non-touch mix sets me off. Sorry.

PS. Sorry about the Danish screenshots.

PPS. Seems like I’m making a habit of publishing previews on the 13th of the month. Our previous preview of the Satio was posted exactly a month ago. Let’s hope this won’t won’t result in any bad things happening considering it indeed is Friday the 13th!