New mobile models and new technologies

In particular, they’ve made the Yari a gaming phone – and not just any gaming phone, but one that thinks it’s a Nintendo Wii!

The question is though, is the gaming functionality of the Yari any good, and does the phone work as a phone?

In short, is the Yari a phone you’d want to buy?

Read our full Sony Ericsson Yari review to find out.

Sony Ericsson Yari overview

At first glance, the Yari is quite a looker, particularly in some of the more extreme colour variants you can buy it in. It’s a standard slider phone with a 2.4″ screen and slide out keypad. Although there’s no touchscreen (the Yari is not meant to be a smartphone), it’s by no means under-featured.

For example it’s got a 5 megapixel camera, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, 30 frames per second video camera, GPS and a gorgeous screen capable of displaying 16 million colours.

Every feature you’d want and each with the quality you’d expect from Sony Ericsson.

But the Yari has a little trick up its sleeve – or, to be more precise, at the top of its screen.

A true Sony Ericsson gaming phone

At the top of the screen on the Sony Ericsson Yari are two little buttons and an unusual looking sensor. The buttons are the dedicated gaming keys, which, when the Yari is turned on its side, let you control the movements of your character in the games that you play.

So it’s not just that Sony Ericsson are claiming the Yari is a gaming phone – it really is one, and has been designed as such from the start.

Better still, though, is the sensor – it’s a Nintendo Wii-like sensor that supports gesture control, letting you play a game just by waving your hand in front of it. That’s not all, though. As if playing games using your hand as a controller wasn’t enough, the Yari itself can be a complete controller, in a way similar to the Wii’s Wiimote.

Using the Yari’s accelerometer and camera, you can control your player by moving the phone itself.

Take tennis, for example. You position your player, and then swing the Yari as if it was a tennis racket. The Yari recognizes your movement by using the camera to detect how fast it’s been swung, which is an extremely inventive use of a phone’s camera.

If tennis doesn’t float your boat, don’t worry – there are over 200 available for download from Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow Arena store.