Sony Ericsson Yari U100i

The Nintendo Wii has left many people impressed with its gesture gaming hook and left many more wondering if that kind of technology was possible on the mobile phone. Well, with the latest from Sony Ericsson, its latest Yari range of phones, you need wonder no more. Sony Ericsson has brought gesture gaming on the mobile platform. This, I believe is going to be the next big thing in mobile gaming in the year 2010. Before we review the rest of the phone, let’s take a long, detailed look at the gaming facet of the Sony Ericsson Yari U100i. After all, the motion controlled gaming is the unique selling point of the device. The Games menu of the SE Yari U100i has about ten pre-installed games. Out of these ten, Tennis, Bowling and Fitness support the gesture gaming feature that the phone touts. The phone comes along with a stand and some of these games are supposed to be played by placing the phone on the stand in the portrait orientation. mong these games, Bowling was the best in terms of response. Here the phone acts like the ball and you perform a bowling motion to play it: after selecting the spin and indicating the ball's direction, you have to make a movement similar to what you would in a bowling arena, the movement is recorded and the ball is then set in motion according to the movement. This is a very addictive game and one that is sure to raise many an eyebrow if played in public places.
 
Fitness as the name suggests is a game with has exercises such as squatting, side stepping and yoga. After the camera is done sensing the person standing in front of it, the game starts with an animated person on screen along with arrows, both of which you are supposed to follow for that particular exercise.
Tennis gets annoying after a while as there is a delay in the phone’s response. To strike the ball with the racquet, you sometime have to do go through the ‘hitting’ motion before the ball actually reaches the racquet. The lag in the game is a big turn off. It would have helped if the game developers mentioned the appropriate distance to be kept from the phone while playing the game.
For additional gesture games such as Baseball and Boxing, you can log onto the Play Now arena which is a Sony Ericsson application store and buy games. They are available at a hefty price (GBP 4 which comes to approximately Rs. 320), which is a downer.

The gaming experience on the whole leaves a lot to be desired. Except for Bowling the other games fall flat on their face. If more than one person comes in front of the sensor the camera gets confused and you have a messy experience at best. This gesture-based gaming, however, does not hog the battery life as one would expect.