Sony Ericsson’s Aino for PS3

With the recent release of the PS3 Slim, comes another new piece of Sony hardware. Sony Ericsson’s Aino is the world’s first mobile phone able to access video and music stored on the games console’s hard disk or on any device connected to it. It’s a very interesting device that is clearly part of a broader strategy by Sony to put the PS3 at the center of an Digital HD 3D do it all, multimedia device.

Once the phone has been registered with a PS3 running on a broadband home network — a procedure much like pairing two Bluetooth devices — you can connect with the console over the internet from anywhere in the world. The PS3’s distinctive XMB “crossbar”, a menu that will be familiar to users of the console, is reproduced on the screen of the phone, allowing you to take control of the PS3 remotely.

This lets you, for example, command the PS3 to scroll to the video folder so you can choose a film. Select play and the console compresses the video to the size of the phone’s 3in display, streaming it over the net to the handset, with no apparent time delay.