Sony Ericsson has made a concerted effort in the past several months to play its part in combating climate change by releasing many devices through its Greenheart range. The Greenheart phones are designed to come in less packaging and produce less harmful toxins during production, as well as featuring other environment-conscious features. While the green qualities were typically the only selling points of earlier Greenheart phones the new Sony Ericsson Aspen aims to combine the eco-friendliness of the product range with a high degree of business and entertainment oriented features.

Sony Ericsson Aspen Appearance and Screen quality

The Aspen follows a similar style to earlier Greenheart phones, but employs a BlackBerry style physical form with a scaled down QWERTY keypad beneath its screen. The screen itself is a 2.4″ TFT display featuring over 16 million colours and a high resolution of 320 x 240 (QVGA) to provide a sharp and detailed rendering of the Xperia Panels interface.

The Aspen includes an accelerometer that can be used to easily rotate the screen between portrait and landscape by turning the phone in the desired orientation. As well as having the keypad for input the screen on the Aspen is also touch sensitive, making use of resistive technology for enhanced precision.

Sony Ericsson Aspen Media & entertainment

The media player included with the Aspen comes with a high degree of music and video playback with support for popular formats such as MP3 and WMA for music and MP4 and WMV for video. While the Aspen only comes with a limited 100MB of internal storage space this can be easily increased to 16GB with microSD cards. A 4GB microSD card is included with the phone.

If you still run out of space you can always make use of the FM radio (with RDS) so that you can catch up with all the latest music. If you travel a lot by bus then you will be glad to hear that there is a 3.5mm audio jack for the connection of headphones.

The Aspen comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera with digital zoom and fantastic features such as multi-shot and self-timer. The camera can also capture video and with built-in YouTube and Facebook apps you can quickly and easily upload your photos and videos to share online. There are also apps for many other services including Twitter and Skype.

Sony Ericsson Aspen OS, Connectivity and Battery Life

The Aspen operates on Windows Mobile 6.5.3 Professional, which comes packed with many features ideally suited for professional phone users. These features include a PDF viewer and Microsoft Pocket Office (with support for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote). This is coupled with Sony Ericsson’s new Xperia Panels interface that was designed for the Xperia X2.

The Aspen is a quad-band GSM device with support for 3G being provided via HSDPA/HSUPA. The Aspen can also connect through GPRS and EDGE, as well as having support for microUSB, Bluetooth with A2DP and Wi-Fi. There is also A-GPS that can be used to operate navigational software as well as Sony Ericsson’s Eco Mate application (see below).

Sony Ericsson Aspen Email and Messaging capabilities

The Aspen has excellent support for email and messaging. As well as supporting MMS messages the Aspen allows you to display SMS messages in threaded view. Threaded viewing does not place all of your messages into an inbox folder but displays them on a per-contact basis, making your correspondences much more intuitive and easy to keep track of. As well as standard messages you can also keep up with your contacts in real time through instant messaging, with the WinMo OS providing excellent support for Windows Live in particular.

The Aspen is an ideal phone for people who need to keep up to date with their emails while on the move. The Aspen comes with support for SMTP, IMAP, POP3 and Microsoft Exchange protocols as well as push email, whereby you are automatically notified of new emails as they are sent to your account. The QWERTY keypad on the Aspen makes it much easier for typing out long messages, whether they be emails or standard text messages.

Sony Ericsson Aspen Green Credentials

Like all Sony Ericsson Greenheart phones the Aspen is produced with minimal waste and by using as much recycled materials as possible. As well as using recycled plastics and metals, Sony Ericsson has tried to refrain from using toxic materials that are used in the production of most mobile phones that can render them environmentally hazardous when discarded.

The phone is sold in minimal packaging in contrast to most handsets that are sold in layers of unnecessary plastic and cardboard that is usually destined straight for the bin once the phone has been purchased. The Aspen does not come with a paper instruction booklet either, as the instructions are contained electronically on the phone itself. This should not pose a problem unless you need the instructions to figure out how to turn the phone on (you don’t).

There are several features on the Aspen that are aimed at making its owners more environmentally conscious including the Eco Mate application. This is essentially a modified pedometer that can inform you of how much you are reducing your carbon footprint by walking instead of driving.

Sony Ericsson Aspen summary

It is commendable that Sony Ericsson is trying to make some sort of effort with regards to the environment (and seems to be one of the only major mobile phone manufacturers to do so), but with earlier Greenheart phones this had seemed like a bit of gimmick or an empty gesture – as the only thing that marked the phones out were their green credentials.

Now with the Aspen Sony Ericsson is starting to offer environmentally friendly phones that come with many more desirable features, and can even compete against some of the mainstream professional phones on the market. Hopefully there will be some more additions to the Greenheart line catered towards other niches soon, such as a handset with a powerful camera or a Greenheart music-phone. We shall wait and see. In the meantime check out all the fantastic Sony Ericsson Aspen Deals or read some more Sony Ericsson Aspen Reviews on our review section.

Tags: sony ericsson, Sony Ericsson Aspen, Sony-Ericsson-Aspen-Review, Sony-Ericsson-Aspen-Specs

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Sony Ericsson News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.