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The Sony Ericsson Yendo is the first full touch walkman phone from SE. With its Walkman logo, ten vibrant colours from which buyers can choose – red , yellow, purple, white, orange, green, silver, black, pink, and blue, as well as its very attractive price, SE clearly has its sights set on the teen market (and those who are young at heart).
Design Features The Yendo’s performs well in terms of reception, loudspeaker and in-call sound quality. Messaging can be a bit of a hassle for those on the go or hardcore texters, as it does not come with a virtual QWERTY keyboard. Its lack of an accelerometer also means it’s not capable of screen auto-rotation. The Yendo features the latest in Walkman software, which strives to offer a user-centric music experience. The music player supports various formats (MP3, WAV, WMA etc). Users can create playlists and sort their music by various categories. SensMe is a nifty little feature that assesses the mood and tempo of the track that is currently playing and uses that information to suggest songs and generate playlists. Because the Yendo does not come with an accelerometer, it does not offer the Shake Control feature that many other Walkman phones have. Considering that the Yendo is a Walkman phone, it is a little odd that the music player does not come with a manual equaliser, only presets (Bass, Megabass, Treble etc). Moreover, repeating tracks is impossible. The 3.5mm audio jack allows users to use their own favourite headsets, and also supports the Sony Ericsson MH-810 headset, which of course, is optional. The Yendo features a 2.0 megapixel camera with 4X zoom. Autofocus, flash assistance and geo-tagging are all absent; and photo quality is mediocre at best. There is also no secondary camera for video-calling. Suffice to say, the Yendo’s camera is underwhelming. The Yendo’s very basic video player supports MP4, WMV, H.263 and H.264 3GP files and is capable of recording videos in QCIF resolution (approximately 0.02 megapixels). Quality of recorded video is below average, but manages a fairly consistent frame rate of 30fps. The photo viewer allows one-finger zooming instead of pinch-zooming. It is simple and does not take any getting used to. The Yendo’s Obigo Q7 browser felt very much like an afterthought. There is no page zooming option, multiple tab function, and flash support. The standard Youtube application does not make an appearance either. The Yendo fails to impress on the connectivity front. It only supports 2G, GPRS class and EDGE. For some, the lack of WiFi, 3G and GPS is kind of a deal-breaker. USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP are included; enabling file transferring as well as phone charging, and audio streaming to a paired Bluetooth headset respectively. The 5MB internal memory is insufficient for music lovers, but the Yendo supports up to 16GB Micro SD memory cards. A 970mAh Li-Polymer battery powers the Yendo. It provides 312 hours of standby time and 3.5 hours of talk time. Pros and Cons Conclusion |