Calvin’s Hub

Yesterday I was able to attend Sony Ericsson’s launching of their three much-awaited phones here in the country, the Kita, Aino and Satio. Yeah I’m glad they did away in using those confusing model numbers.

I was very much excited about the Kita when I learned what a cool thing it could do which I think would be the trend in the future when it comes to mobile devices.

The Sony Ericsson Kita looks like your average multimedia slider phone; 5 MP camera, no touchscreen, no WiFi, can play video, audio and games. So what’s so special about it right?

It is the first mobile phone as far as I know that can do gesture gaming. Gesture gaming you say? Think about Wii or the highly anticipated Xbox Project Natal where you use body or arm movements to play the game. That’s gesture gaming in Kita.

The Kita uses its front camera to sense your movement. Prop it in a stand in front of you and start playing. We tried the tennis game where you move your hand up then down to serve then move sideways to control your player’s movement.

It’s a bit awkward at first and it could use some more polishing but the one we used was just a demo unit and not the release to market one. Too bad you can’t connect it to a big screen so others could also see you playing but the graphics aren’t that slick anyway. Other games include boxing, bowling and fitness.

The SE Kita also has a built-in accelerometer so you can simply tilt your phone to play games like LocoRoco. The Sony PSP can’t do that. Hehehe.

The Sony Ericsson Kita (known as Yari outside the country) is a reasonably priced mid-level phone at P12,990 and if you’re not interested with the games, it’s still a decent media phone with 3G connectivity. I don’t think gesture gaming will catch on at this time but it’s future on mobile devices looks bright.

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Filed under: Gadgets n' Games