New Aino and Yari entertainment phones introduce Sony Ericsson's Java Platform 8.5 (JP-8.5)

Sony Ericsson announced two new entertainment phones on May 28, 2009 – Aino focuses on sound & vision and Yari is the first phone outside the Japanese market to have gesture gaming.

Aino and Yari are Java™ Platform 8 (JP-8) phones, making it 30 phone series that support MSA, and introduce the new JP-8.5 sub-category with extended functionality of the Java Platform. Both phones support the Sony Ericsson Project Capuchin API, so now 12 phone series have this bridging technology.

Below is an overview of each phone and a summary of the extended platform functionality delivered by JP-8.5, including Sony Ericsson APIs made publicly available for the first time and new liberalized permission settings.

Aino: sound and vision
Aino is a HSDPA, slider-format phone combining the best of two worlds with a keypad and a intuitive touch UI in media mode. Aino includes Sony Ericsson's MediaGo™ application which transfers, plays and organizes music, photos and videos in most file formats, and Remote Play for PLAYSTATION®3 allowing you to control your PLAYSTATION 3 and access its media contents from your mobile phone.

Movies can be downloaded from Sony Ericsson's new PlayNow™ arena with movies service.


Sony Ericsson's Aino.

Aino features a 8.1 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, aGPS, an accelerometer, a DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) server to connect to compatible devices, a 240x432 pixel 16,777,216 color TFT display, 55MB internal memory and external memory using SanDisk MicroSD™.

Aino will be available during Q4 2009.

Yari: gesture gaming
Sony Ericsson's Yari is the first mobile phone outside the Japanese market to have gesture gaming. In addition to this motion gaming experience, Yari also offers A/B gaming shortcut keys, 3D games and a new gaming carousel giving direct access to games from the phone's desktop and to download more games from PlayNow arena.

Yari features a 5.0 megapixel camera, aGPS, an accelerometer, a DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) server to connect to compatible devices, a 240x320 pixel 262Kcolor QVGA display, 60MB internal memory and external memory using SanDisk MicroSD.

Yari will be available during Q4 2009. More information and specifications here>>


Sony Ericsson's Java Platform strategy
Sony Ericsson uses a platform approach to Java ME platform implementation allowing developers to focus on a platform rather than on a variety of phone product names. As a platform supports many phones, you can deploy one build across several phones saving time and effort.

The platforms are implemented through an evolutionary approach to ensure forwards compatibility between platform versions.

Java Platform 8.5 (JP-8.5) – new sub-category with extended functionality
All JP-8 phones are based on MIDP 2.1 and have the same core JSR set based on the Java umbrella standard Mobile Services Architecture (MSA) JSR 248. The addition of the new Aino and Yari means that MSA full set can now be found in 30 Sony Ericsson phone series.

Sony Ericsson's Project Capuchin API is supported by all JP-8.4 phones and onwards. Aino and Yari take the number of phones with Project Capuchin to 12. Download Project Capuchin Docs & Tools>>

The new Aino and Yari are JP-8.5 phones which are differentiated from previous JP-8 sub-categories with extended functionality of the Java Platform.

Here is an overview of these extensions:

Nokia IAP Info API
Publicly available in JP-8.5, the Nokia IAP Info API allows Java applications to access fundamental Internet Access points and Destination Network related information.
Sony Ericsson Network bearer API (IAP Info extensions)
This native Sony Ericsson API is first made public on JP-8.5 and is an extension of the Nokia IAP Info API. The "IAP Info API" (com.nokia.mid.iapinfo) provides a convenient interface for Java applications to query and use the network settings of the mobile phone. However, IAP Info is limited to the static configuration of the phone, and in many situations this is not enough. In some applications, it is desirable to subscribe to network configuration updates, such as when a new bearer becomes available. This is the purpose of Sony Ericsson's IAP Info extensions defined in the Network bearer API.
Liberalized Permission Settings
The permission settings have been updated to the more user-friendly configuration put forward in the JSR 248 (MSA) specifications. This allows Java applications in the "Untrusted" domain to ask a lot less permission questions, and applications signed in "Trusted 3rd Party" could actually get rid of all questions if the user selects that when the questions appear the first time.
Additional Content Handlers (JSR 211)
The following content handlers are available on JP-8.5 - camera application (picture or video clip retrieval), phonebook launcher, positioning LMX, send via Bluetooth™, VideoDJ and SIM application toolkit.
Sensor API (JSR 256) extensions
The extensions available on JP-8.5 phones include the sensors for camera motion, camera shake detection and step counter.
Java Bindings for OpenGL® ES API (JSR 239), 1.1 Extension Pack support
Sony Ericsson JP-8 phones fully support OpenGL and EGL version 1.0. JP-8.5 sees the addition of the OpenGL ES 1.1 Extension Pack.
More information about JP-8.5 extended functionality is presented in the updated Java ME CLDC MIDP 2 Developers' Guidelines – download here>>

Use phone's system properties to query Java Platform version
The major platforms revisions are incremented with minor revisions that can include additional functionality and improvements whilst ensuring backwards compatibility within the same Sony Ericsson Java Platform.

You can query the Sony Ericsson Java Platform on the phone with the "com.sonyericsson.java.platform" system property

System.getProperty("com.sonyericsson.java.platform");