Sony Ericsson Yendo review, Price, pictures, Details, model specifications

2011/01/08

Sony Ericsson Yendo review, Price, pictures, Details, model specifications

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 with A2DP
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.

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 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.

Telephony without Smart dialing

The Sony Ericsson Yendo had no issues with reception and the in-call sound was loud and clear.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.