By Sherwin Loh

Wow factor: Gesture gaming

TALK about hands-free mobility. The Yari is the first cellphone outside Japan that features what Sony terms gesture gaming, where the camera tracks your movements to respond to the game.

In the demo, I tried two games - tennis and boxing.

In both instances though, the camera was placed on a display stand, allowing me full use of both hands with the game. I reckon in reality, users will have one hand holding the phone and be able to only use the other to play the game.

In tennis, during the serve, an upward directional icon will appear and slowly fill up. When it is full, swiping your hand upwards near the camera will cause the player persona to toss the ball.

Immediately, a downward icon will pop up and fill very quickly and you have to smack downwards to finish the serve.

During a return volley, a bar comes up onscreen and when filled, a sideways gesture in either directions will make your player return the ball.

While it sounds simple, getting the speed of the gestures down pat is key. Swipe your hand too fast or too slow and the camera does not register anything.

There is also no precision in gameplay as players cannot direct the angle of the hit. In the boxing game though, the gesturing was not as intuitive.

The sport requires speed but each time I swung both hands, the first gesture would register but not the second.

Perhaps I was "air punching" too fast but, for goodness sake, whoever boxes in slow motion?

The phone will come pre-packaged with three games, including a yoga one that uses gesture controls, with some also available online.

This gaming pedigree also comes with a 5MP camera, Bluetooth connectivity as well as music playback.

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