Sony Ericsson Yari Reviewed: Gesture Gaming Surprisingly Playable

Sony Ericsson's Yari motion-gaming handset only made its official debut last night, but already GSMArena have posted their review of the 5-megapixel slider.  As you might expect, it's the special movement-tracking gaming that prompts the biggest smiles, but there's still some love spared for the 5-megapixel camera with autofocus.

The camera produces decent pictures – there's at least one sample here - but video recording is still limited to QVGA 30fps.  There's no Xenon flash, either, and while the camera will geo-tag and use Smile Detection, Sony Ericsson have left out BestPic.  The NetFront browser performs reasonably, though there's no streaming Flash video support, and the gaming works well within the limits of a cellphone.  We still wonder whether people will take to motion gaming on a phone as they did on the Wii; it'll take more than the paltry two titles Sony Ericsson preload onto the Yari to convince us.

In the end, though, despite a screen that could do with being larger, and that frustrating video recording limit, the Yari rates well.  Want to see the Yari in action?  Check out our hands-on video demo and gallery from the launch event yesterday.  It's expected to reach the market in Q4 2009.

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