Sony Ericsson Yari, Idou and Aino: three new cell phones

Sony Ericsson announced three new phones on Thursday, all of which will eventually appear in the United States. Sony also announced a new sideloading movie service that will be compatible with two of the company’s newly announced phones.Sony Ericsson’s U.K. division announced the three phones in the U.K., which will ship to “selected markets,” including the United States, in the fourth quarter.

The three phones are the Satio, which was previously known as the Idou, the 12.1 megapixel cameraphone that wowed audiences at the Mobile World Congress; the Yari, a phone designed for “gesture gaming; and the Aino, which boasts an 8.1 Mpixel camera and the ability to control the Sony PlayStation 3. Sony did not announce prices on any of the models.

Both the Yari and Satio/Idou will be built in both U.S. and European versions, with the U.S. versions compatible with AT&T but not with T-Mobile. The Aino will come in one model, but it looks like that model will be compatible with AT&T.

Sony’s new movie service, dubbed PlayNow, will make its debut on both the Satio/Idou as well as the Aino. However, PlayNow will only be available in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and in the U.K., at least for now.

Sony is positioning all three phones as entertainment devices, but with different slants on the concept. PlayNow, by contrast, is designed to an overarching service that add value to multiple models.

PlayNow is a service to download movies via a PC and then “sideload” them to the phones via a USB cable. Using a desktop browser, users will be able to visit the Sony PlayNow web site and choose from about 15 movies at any one time. Sony will add four new titles every month, subtracting the same amount, the company said. Users can download and watch 60 movies in a 12-month period; each movie can be watched as many times as a user likes for 90 days.

Sony has positioned the Yari as the ultimate phone for mobile fun, with a number of innovative new features. Sony claims that the Yari will be the first phone to allow “gesture gaming” outside Japan, which apparently involves moving the user’s body to play a number of games that will either be preloaded or can be downloaded. It’s not clear, however, which games will be included, or how these gestures will actually be incorporated.

The Yari will measure 100 x 48 x 15.7 mm, with a weight of 115 grams. The slider phone will include a 2.4-inch screen capable of 240 x 320 resolution. Inside will be 60 Mbytes of storage, plus a microSD slot for an included 1-Gbyte card. The Yari will ship in Achromatic Black and Cranberry White early in the fourth quarter.

Features will include the gesture games, which will be controlled with gestures and an arcade-style “A” and “B” button, as well as a 5.0-Mpixel camera with face detection and geotagging. A2DP stereo Bluetooth will be included, as well as the ability to shake the phone to shuffle tracks. The Yari will also include the ability to place a “music call,” apparently allowing a friend to listen to the same track over the phone.

The Aino can also be considered a gaming phone, albeit in passing. Sony is positioning the phone as a complement to its PlayStation 3 console, allowing it the ability to access content stored on the console via Wi-Fi, a capability previously reserved for Sony’s PSP mobile gaming device. The Sony Media Go software also allows content to be transferred from the PC to the phone via Wi-Fi.

The Aino measures 104 x 50 x 15.5 mm, weighing 134 grams. The slightly larger size also translates into a larger 3-inch screen, with a 240 x 432 screen with 16 million or “true” color playback.

The Aino provides assisted GPS, and the ability to access DLNA devices on the network. A 8.1-Mpixel is also included, with a 16X digital zoom. It also packs a wireless Bluetooth headset as well as a charging stand. It will ship in either Obsidian Black and Luminous White.

The Satio/Idou appears to be identical to the model that Gearlog tested out at the Mobile World Congress.

Facebook hit by phishing emails again

For the second time in a week, Facebook users have been hit with an e-mail phishing attack that attempts to obtain their passwords to the social networking site. Users who saw “Hello” in an e-mail subject line Thursday and clicked on a Web link that said “areps.at” or “brunga.at” were taken to a fake Facebook log-in page, where they were asked for their passwords.

Those behind the attack are looking to use passwords to gain access to users’ Facebook accounts which include personal information, as well as links to information about family, friends and business associates.

They’re also hoping that those passwords are the same for users’ other accounts, including bank accounts, which could “have more financial viability” for thieves, said Laura Mather, managing director of operational policy for the Anti-Phishing Working Group. The group is comprised of law enforcement, business and computer security professionals.

The latest Facebook phishing scam is “not widespread and only impacted a tiny fraction of a percent of users,” said Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt. “We’ve been updating our monitoring systems with information gleaned from the previous attacks so that each new attack is detected more quickly.”

Some Facebook users said they knew of several other users who also received the suspicious e-mails.

“We have already blocked links to these new phishing sites from being shared on Facebook, have had them added to the ‘block’ list of the major (Web) browsers and have begun working with partners to have the sites taken down completely,” Schnitt said. “We’re also cleaning up phony messages and ‘Wall’ posts and resetting the passwords of affected users.”

Facebook and other social networking sites, including MySpace and Twitter, have had problems previously with phishing. But Facebook, the largest of such sites, with more than 200 million users, seems to have been more of a target for the phishing attempts in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, the company said on its security blog that in conjunction with MarkMonitor enterprise security firm, “we’ve responded to over 1,400 phishing sites, including over 240 since the beginning of this year.”

Last week, some Facebook users found similar phishing e-mails in their in-boxes with the “Hello” greeting and the body of the message telling them to “Check 121.im” with “121.im” as the Web link that went to a fake Facebook page. Many of them logged in, giving their passwords.

“To combat these threats, we need users’ help, too,” Schnitt said. He said it is important for users to have an up-to-date Web browser that has strong anti-phishing features, such as Firefox 3.0.10 or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8.