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SonyEricsson > Yendo > Review
SonyEricsson Yendo Video Review |
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ntroduction
It looks like the XPERIA X10 mini but acts like what it is – a full-touch feature phone. This is obviously nothing really to shout about as there are hundreds of them around now. It’s a first for Sony Ericsson but that’s not what makes it special either.
The Sony Ericsson Yendo will not stand being treated like just another touchscreen dumbphone. That Walkman badge commands a different level of respect. Now, does it really or is it what the Yendo likes to think?
There isn’t much this little fella can actually promise you. But you’ll be glad to hear the Sony Ericsson Yendo can keep its word. The Walkman logo implies above average sonic experience that the phone does well to deliver.
Here is what else to expect from the Sony Ericsson Yendo. It isn’t much but there’s enough to be excited about in terms of social skills and a positive personality.
Key features
* Ultra compact
* Dual-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
* Touch-friendly four corner UI
* 2.6" capacitive touchscreen of QVGA resolution
* 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera with video recording
* Standard microUSB port for charging and data
* Stereo Bluetooth
* microSD card slot with support for up to 16GB
* 3.5mm-compatible audio jack
* Facebook and Twitter apps
* Wide range of color versions
* Attractive price
Main disadvantages
* No 3G, Wi-Fi
* Smallish, low-res display
* Sluggish user interface
* Basic music player (for a Walkman phone)
* Disappointing camera
* No file browser
* No multi-tasking
* No accelerometer for auto-screen rotation
The Yendo is the first feature phone to come with the Four corner UI, as seen on the XPERIA X10 mini. While it is offering little new, it’s still nice looking and intuitive. And that is very important when it comes to touch phones. The expected price of around 100 euro is another point in favor. And the Walkman branding makes it all the sweeter.
As for the other features, they’re mostly nice to have but not essential in a package of this kind. Yes, there is a camera on board for example, but with limited functionality and unimpressive image quality.
The touchscreen is on the small size and the resolution is low. On the other hand, the user interface is both thumbable and eye-pleasing so you might not notice the screen’s downsides.
You’re welcome to follow us on the next page, as we discover the Yendo. The invitation is still good even if you think there isn’t much to discover. There’re many people shopping for basic touch phones. We guess a Walkman phone that fits the description is sure to draw crowds.
Sony Ericsson Yendo 360-degree spin
The XPERIA minis are kindly letting the Yendo wear their outfit. The Yendo is an entry-level phone and potential buyers need to know what they’re getting. It’s simple and compact – but not as tiny as the couple of minis. There’s no room for extravagance – you don’t want your customers wondering if the size is right and if the phone handles nicely.
In the end, the Yendo just couldn’t have been simpler: a small QVGA touchscreen in an all-plastic set. At 93.5 x 52 x 15.5 mm, the phone is right between the XPERIA X10 mini and the XPERIA X8.
The weight of 81 grams is definitely on the light side, but the 15.5mm of thickness does sound a bit much. Never mind, the phone is absolutely OK to handle.
Design and construction
Up front, the only thing to let you tell the Yendo apart from an XPERIA X8 is the Walkman logo in the bottom right corner. Other than that, the difference is mostly in scale – the Yendo even has the unusually shaped 3.5 mm audio jack of the XPERIA droids.
The front (both the screen and the frame around it) is prone to fingerprints but the matt plastic on the back is smudge-proof.
Like the other recently launched full touch Sony Ericsson devices, the Yendo comes in an assortment of paintjobs. While the front is always black, the rear can be in 10 different colors ranging across Blue, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red, Yellow, Silver, White and Black.
The QVGA touchscreen on the Yendo measures the measly 2.6 inches but Sony Ericsson has done a nice job of optimizing the user interface.
The screen sensitivity is excellent, and that’s no news for a capacitive unit. The slightest of touches will do, for a great touchscreen experience.
The image quality is decent – the screen size makes the low pixel count a lot less prominent. With good brightness and contrast levels the screen is more than acceptable in this price range. Viewing angles are OK and so is sunlight legibility. The screen tends to reflect light but the phone is still usable even on a bright sunny day.
Below the display there is a single hardware control. The Home key is thin but nicely raised and with good tactile feedback. On top of that, it glows in the dark.
Above the display we find a status LED, the earpiece, as well as a proximity sensor. The proximity sensor is in charge of locking the display when you hold it next to your ear during calls.
The right-hand side of the Sony Ericsson Yendo has only the volume rocker and on the left we find an exposed microUSB port.
The top features the screen lock key which also acts as a power button. It’s small and barely protrudes but it was obviously done on purpose to minimize accidental presses.
At the top of the Sony Ericsson Yendo you’ll also find the audio jack and a lanyard eyelet. While the audio jack looks a bit weird, it is absolutely compatible with standard 3.5mm plugs.
Speaking of the unusual shape, it is designed to accommodate the optional Hi-Fi Sony Ericsson MH-810 headset with music controls.
At the bottom – which is bereft of any controls – a full Walkman logo is inscribed.
The back of the phone features the 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera lens and the loudspeaker. The camera lens is not covered but quite inset, giving it a reasonable protection against scratches (but not against dust).
Removing the battery cover reveals the microSD card slot and the SIM compartment. The microSD slot is hot-swap-enabled despite being placed under the cover. Another good news here is that the battery is removable, as opposed to the X10 mini.
The Sony Ericsson Yendo is powered by a 970mAh Li-Polymer battery quoted at up to 312 hours of standby and 3 hours 30 minutes of talk time.
Even though it’s completely made of plastic, the Yendo feels sturdy enough. We experienced no wobbles and creaks while reviewing the phone. USB charging and the standard 3.5mm jack are good things to have. The standard connectivity port is especially welcome. Sony Ericsson feature phones with USB interface are hard to come by.
Thanks to its compact size and well-thought out curved design, the Sony Ericsson Yendo fits nicely in the palm and is very secure to hold. 15.5mm thick does sound too much but the set is absolutely fine to handle comfortably. The Yendo has perfect size for single-handed use and the curved corners do help mask some of the thickness. The most important things about the Yendo are simplicity and compact size. The multiple color versions make sense in a phone that aims at the mass market.
The Four corner touch UI gone dumb
Unlike the other full touch Sony Ericsson devices, the Yendo isn’t running the Android OS. It’s because the thing is not a smartphone.
As a matter of fact, this is the company’s first full touch feature phone. And on top of that, it’s also the first full touch handset with Walkman branding.
Having that said, let’s take a look at the Sony Ericsson Yendo user interface. The phone has borrowed the Four-corner touch UI, which we first saw on the XPERIA X10 mini.
The Yendo uses almost same homescreen and main menu as its smarter bros, the XPERIA X8, X10 mini and X10 mini pro.
However, this time there are no widgets available on the homescreen, not even a single one. The only thing that is somewhat reminiscent of a widget is the music controls that show up on the homescreen once you minimize the Walkman player.
And when the player is switched off, on the homescreen appears a large clock with the date underneath it.
The handy four-corner shortcuts from the X10 mini make an appearance here as well. By default, they take you to the Walkman player, message composer, phonebook and dial pad/call log. You can switch them with any four shortcuts you like though.
At the top of the screen there is a thin strip hosting status info about battery, signal strength and others such as Bluetooth.
Sadly, the Yendo lacks multi-tasking. That’s why there is no task switcher either. What we miss more, however, is the file browser. There is none on board!
The Sony Ericsson Yendo uses a regular feature phone CPU and unfortunately you can feel it throughout the user interface – it’s sluggish all around. We experienced lots of short freeze-ups and we’re generally displeased with how it performs.
Keep in mind that this review is based on a pre-release sample of the Sony Ericsson Yendo so some things (including UI speed) might change until the handset ships to the market in Q1.
Nice phonebook
The Yendo phonebook has space for 1000 contacts and 5000 numbers. It lets you input multiple phone numbers and there are additional fields for email address, address, organisation, ringtone or birthday.
When viewing a contact, the various details are displayed in sections. Tapping on a given number dials the contact while opting for the envelope icon next to it launches the message editor. Those two buttons fill an entire horizontal row so that they are more thumbable.
Telephony without Smart dialing
The Sony Ericsson Yendo had no issues with reception and the in-call sound was loud and clear.
Unfortunately, the device lacks Smart dialing unlike most of the recent Sony Ericson phones. By the way, even the Android-driven Sony Ericsson smartphones haven’t heard of Smart dialing yet.
In the Yendo the call log is a part of the dialer application. You can easily search the entries in it by flick scrolling.
Thanks to the proximity sensor the Sony Ericsson Yendo automatically switches off its touchscreen when you hold it next to your ear for a call. There is no chance of ever hitting an on-screen button with your cheek on this one.
We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on the Sony Ericsson Yendo. The Yendo scored "Good", meaning you could miss some calls in noisier environments depending on the ringtones you use. More info on the test, as well as other results can be found here.
QWERTY-less messaging
The SMS and MMS messaging section is quite straightforward and simple. When you add multimedia content to the message, it is automatically turned into an MMS.
Moving onto email, the Yendo mail client supports both POP and IMAP inboxes, however, we had to configure it manually. This took us only a few moments, though. The Email app interface is simple and thumbable.
The screen of the Sony Ericsson Yendo as tiny as the device itself so you shouldn’t be surprise hearing that the phone lacks a virtual QWERTY keyboard and since there is no hardware keyboard either, all you get is the on-screen alphanumeric keypad. It certainly won’t please heavy texters but it’s good enough for the occasional use.
The gallery offers one-finger zoom
Strangely, the Sony Ericsson Yendo gallery doesn’t locate the images stored on the memory card or in the phone’s storage automatically. If you don’t move your images to the DCIM folder, you won’t be able to see them using the gallery. As for the interface you get a plain grid with the images sorted by date.
The gallery supports finger scrolling or panning so you can skip images without having to return to the default view. Just sweep to the left or right when looking at a photo fullscreen, and the previous/next image will appear.
Since the phone lacks a built-in accelerometer the screen orientation doesn’t switch automatically when you rotate the device.
Pinch-zooming isn’t available but Sony Ericsson has come up with their own version of one-finger zoom that actually works great. You just hold your finger down and than sweep upwards for zooming in or downwards for zooming out. The one-finger zoom could be both quicker and way more responsive, though.
With the Yendo sending pics over Bluetooth is easy. You can also send images as email or as MMS.
Video player is basic
The video player is simple in looks and functionality. You get a list of all videos stored in the Video folders in storage and on the microSD memory card as well as play/pause, skip controls, and a draggable progress bar.
As far as playback support is concerned, MP4 videos are as good as it gets. The Yendo cannot play DivX/XviD or AVI files.
The Walkman player could have been better
As we’ve already mentioned, the Sony Ericsson Yendo is the company’s first full touch phone with Walkman. Interestingly, the Walkman player interface is almost identical to the one we’ve seen on the Android-powered XPERIA family, save for the Walkman logo replacing the Infinite button in the upper part of the screen.
In order to be able to listen to the music stored in your device or on the memory card, you have to move the files to the Music folder. Sounds familiar, huh?
We first thought that the Yendo music player lacks an equalizer. But as it turned out, it does. But it’s found deep in the Sounds and vibration settings menu. There are numerous EQ presets (including Bass, Treble, Heavy, etc.) but none of them is user-customizable. There is also stereo widening on board.
The Yendo arranges your music by artist or you can see the most/never played tracks, the newly added ones of all of the tracks at a time. Creating your own playlists is impossible.
There is an option to play a random track but, unfortunately, you can’t make the Walkman player repeat a track. Even non-music-centric phones can do that, don’t they?!
Fortunately, at least the TrackID service is present here too. Its user interface is as simple as it gets – just tap the “Record” button, record a short sample of a song from any external source and let the app find the artist and track information for you.
The FM radio is good
The Sony Ericsson Yendo is also equipped with an FM radio, which has a really neat and simple interface. It automatically scans the area for the available stations and places “notches” on the frequency dial for easier scrolling to the next station. Or you can mark some of them as favorite for easier scrolling.
2 megapixel snapper is so two-thousand and late
On the hardware side of things, the Sony Ericsson Yendo has a 2 megapixel camera module for a maximum image resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. Sadly, there is neither autofocus nor flash.
The camera interface is as simple as it gets with three buttons in total. There is a camera/camcorder switch, a gallery button and an on-screen shutter key, which replaces the hardware one.
There is no geotagging or other advanced features. This is certainly one of the most basic camera interfaces on the market but we guess Sony Ericsson thought users wouldn’t need much more and would prefer simplicity to functionality. In the end, it all comes down to the image quality, so let’s see.
Unfortunately, the amount of resolved detail is pretty low and the contrast of the photos is a mixed bag. And with the noise levels also pretty high, you get the idea that you better use the Sony Ericsson Yendo camera for taking contact pics only.
Here are some real-world samples from the Yendo camera:
QCIF video recording
Video recording on the Yendo goes as high as QCIF resolution which, needless to say, is far from impressive. At least the framerate is a good 30 fps and consistent enough.
The interface of the camcorder is similar to the one on the still camera.You can only set the video quality, no other settings are available.
Videos are rendered in 3gp format suggesting lower bitrate, which in turn leads to lots of compression artifacts. The videos taken with the Yendo snapper are only good for MMS.
Entry-level connectivity
The Sony Ericsson Yendo is quite cheap in terms of connectivity. GPS, 3G and Wi-Fi are missing and network data speed is limited to GPRS and EDGE.
We guess all those features are sacrificed for a nice price tag, but we’re yet to see how things shape for the Yendo.
The only good news about the Sony Ericsson Yendo is the 3.5mm audio jack.
Local connectivity comes down to USB v2.0 and Bluetooth. There’s also a memory card slot, which can usually give you the fastest data transfer rates. USB charging via the USB port is possible (actually, this is the only way to recharge the Yendo battery).
The web browser does the job
The Obigo Q7 web browser on the Sony Ericsson Yendo is good enough. It lacks Flash support but considering the small and low-res display and the slow CPU even if there was Flash on board, you wouldn’t have been able to fully enjoy it.
The browser user interface is rather minimalist – all you get on the screen are controls on the bottom of the screen. Those include four large buttons – back, search, reload and more.
Tapping on “more” will bring you to a few more on-screen knobs which allow you to add the visited website to the main menu or to send the link (as message or email).
Strangely, there is no way to zoom the page in or out and there is no support for multiple tabs either.
Speaking of missing Flash support, there is one more thing missing – the YouTube app which would’ve compensate for the lack of Flash video.
Organizer is nice, the doc viewer is missing, though
The Sony Ericsson Yendo has no preinstalled document viewer so you can forget about viewing Office or PDF files.
The calendar has two view modes - daily and monthly. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.
There is also a calculator, a timer, a stopwatch as well as a decent alarm clock aboard. Those are all nicely touch optimized - the buttons are big enough and easy to hit.
Also preinstalled there are a couple of game demos (Brick Breaker Revolution 2, and Nightclub Fever) as well as the Facebook and the Twitter apps. The last two are actually links to the corresponding websites.
Final words
The Sony Ericsson Yendo is still a couple of months away from launch and we hope the time is used wisely. There’s quite a few software-related things to polish. The sluggish user interface for one ruins the fun of having such a neat and good looking touch phone.
There’re too many unknowns with the Yendo and perhaps the slow processor should not take all the blame. After all, this is a feature phone with a small low-res screen and few power-hungry apps. The software package is far from final, so we shouldn’t be too tough on the phone. But at this point it’s obvious there’s a lot of tweaking to do before launch.
Then, the Walkman branding is raising more questions than answers. Ease of use and good looks are key in a low-end touch phone but you can’t help but notice the media package here is just a bit too basic. The Yendo has no accelerometer, hence no fancy features such as Shake Control. There’s no integrated Media Menu to begin with. The poor file management is a letdown too.
Having repeatedly praised the interface of Sony Ericsson feature phones, we’re afraid we can’t hide our disappointment with the Yendo. What we miss the most is the Activity Menu – a quick way to access favorites and the event log – not to mention the Running Apps tab. In fact – smart dial and the multitasking ability were the great Sony Ericsson advantages in feature phones. None of them is enabled on the Yendo. And there’re no homescreen widgets either.
We’ll skip the unimpressive camera and the basic web browser – after all imaging and web aren’t meant to be Yendo’s full-time jobs.
We’ve been painting a rather bleak picture but these are all things users will be right to expect in a Walkman – albeit an entry-level phone. Not least, the Yendo isn’t exactly short of rivals in the basic touch phone segment.
Starting with Samsung, the entry-level C3300K Champ is obviously going after the same crowd. Of course, a bunch of Corbies are a must-consider, including the S3650 Corby or its music-centric twin, the M5650 Lindy.
There’s no shortage of options in the Cookie jar either. LG will be betting on the Cookie Fresh, the Cookie T300 and the Cookie Style T310 to keep a touch Walkman in check. They’re all similarly priced and spec’d and for a bit a more you can grab yourself a 3G-enabled Cookie 3G T320.
And you know, full touch smartphones are not out of reach either – the Symbian-powered Nokia 5230, 5250 or 5530 XpressMusic are not that much more expensive than the Yendo.
The Sony Ericsson Yendo is an entry level phone and we think the concept is well worth it. An affordable touchscreen Walkman can do well for the company in the low end. With wide operator support, the Yendo would be a steal of a deal.
But the launch of the phone was just postponed by another couple of months. Maybe this delay will do the Yendo good. We’ll be looking to fill the gaps in our review and hoping for the same on the part of Sony Ericsson. We hope they give us something positive to write about. Stuff like audio quality, system speed and a more mature touch interface would be welcome.
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