Sony Ericsson Satio (5)

The biggest ‘improvement’ (you’ll see the reason for the quotes as you read on) for the Satio, when compared to the Nokia 5800, the most comparable competitor, platform-wise (i.e. vanilla S60 5th Edition), is the inclusion of a proprietary media suite, written in a way that totally ignores most of the rest of the phone’s interface. For example, it ignores themes – Media suite is resolutely black, rather annoyingly, i.e. you set up something bright and colourful and then both homescreen and media suite stay blacked out. However, I guess the media suite is consistent with other Sony Ericsson phones that have gone before and uses a fairly obvious ‘direct manipulation’ metaphor (e.g. iPhone-like), so finding your way around is rarely a problem.

Within each media suite pane, top and bottom toolbars fill with icons (up to eight in all, in extreme circumstances) – if the thing you want to do can’t be done by just tapping on the media item in question then you can usually find an icon for it on one of the toolbars. Like most of the rest of the Satio interface (excepting the homescreen, strangely), the media suite functions work just as well in landscape mode (by turning the device on its side). Most screens twirl, slide and jiggle into place here, with good use being made of the graphics power under the hood.

Photo

Clearly modelled after the Apple iPhone’s interface, there’s full kinetic display of your camera album, split initially into monthly segments but all really one continuously draggable photo strip using the touchscreen. Tapping any photo brings it up full-screen – if it’s landscape and you’re holding the Satio in portrait mode, you have to rotate the device for best effect – the accelerometer then detects the movement (as you’d expect in a 2010 device) and re-displays the photo in landscape. Ditto for portrait, but the other way round.

Although there are no zoom icons shown/available by default, the volume/zoom keys on the Satio’s side do work (and, curiously, zoom icons appear on-screen after you’ve started the process off with the buttons), with a small corner thumbnail showing where you ‘are’ in a photo when zoomed right in. Zooming performance is good, as you’d expect with the powerful graphics chip inside the phone.

Along the bottom (or right, if the phone’s in landscape mode) of the screen are four icons, mimicking a traditional S60 left-Options, right-back layout, with the addition of ‘Send’ and ‘Delete’. The Options menu turns out to be a pane of icons, but the functions are largely the same. In truth there’s little that’s new here, aside from the eye candy animated swirls that swish around underneath the thumbnails when looking at albums.

Annoyingly, just as with almost every other Symbian-based device from the last 4 years, Photos actually shows phone-shot videos as well, making something of a mockery of having a separate ‘Videos’ section in the media suite. There’s also some separation between types of image, with those that haven’t been shot by the Satio’s camera appearing in their own ‘Pictures’ section. It’s all a little artificial but should provide enough organisation for the average Satio buyer.
Music

In similar fashion, there’s nothing new in the music player, apart from the cosmetic reworking, with the traditional textual menu now represented by a pop-up pane of icons. Underneath the skin, it’s still S60’s Music player and has the same quirks (e.g. horribly unreliable album art). Although there’s no 3.5mm jack built into the Satio, the proprietary lead does have a 3.5mm breakout jack at its other end. The Satio comes with a cheap pair of in-ear headphones that are tinny and unpleasant to listen to, but binning these and plugging in a decent set solved the problem and proved that the sound exiting the Satio itself was quite decent.

As on Nokia’s X6, also without a physical keypad or keyboard, there’s no way to find music while in the Music player module. Instead, to search for a song, you’ve got to back right out to the main S60 Search function and then wait an eternity (you’ll remember that Search is horribly flawed on the Satio?). As with the X6, given that the Nokia 5800 and the baseline S60 5th Edition code both had a ‘Find’ function built-in, it’s criminal that this has not been implemented here.

Sadly, unlike Nokia’s Nseries S60 phones, there’s no EQ here to play around with – what you hear is what you get. There’s just a single speaker for direct listening and this is a bit ‘flat’ in sound, but is OK for spoken word podcasts. Or would be if there were a podcatching app included….

The inclusion of Podcasts in the Music menu looks promising, but it seems this is just a filter for music files on your microSD which happen to be tagged as podcasts – there’s absolutely no mechanism to automatically grab new programmes (as in Nokia’s Podcasting client, also licensed by Samsung). Disappointing, but a workable system as long as you’re happy researching and downloading podcasts on your Windows PC. There’s the third party Escarpod, of course, worth experimenting with.
Video

In addition to videos stored locally on your microSD card, you’re also offered access to the S60 YouTube client and the BBC iPlayer widget here (I presume the latter wouldn’t appear in a non-UK model). Very handy for new users, although the usual caveats over video quality and connection bandwidth/costs apply, of course. The latter also features programme downloads, so kudos to both Sony Ericsson and the BBC for liasing over the right DRM certificates.

It’s in the video player that I encountered my first showstopping Satio bug and it’s one that continues to plague me. Titles of local videos are displayed correctly and can be started playing, with roughly the same (rather poor) compatibility as on the likes of the Nokia N97, i.e. most flavours of MP4, 3GP, WMV and FLV in sensible resolutions and bitrates but having nothing to do with DivX in any shape or form. But, and this is a huge BUT, having played all or part of a clip, if I tap on the ‘Back’ icon, the custom Sony Ericsson video player software freezes solid and nothing can be done with this module (see the Crash Zone below) until the phone is powered off and on again. The bug appeared to go away for a while after installing the R1C firmware, but it’s well and truly back now on the review unit. Very annoying. I’m sure there’s some pointer getting lost somewhere in the code and it will be a one line code fix for the next firmware, but in the meantime it just shows the Satio off as being very buggy.

Crash Zone

As proof (if it were needed) that I’m not making up my reports about buggy firmware, here’s a selection of photos for your interest:

Here’s just one example of the screen corruption and unusable interface left behind by the media suite crashing after playing a video…

No, not a minimalist home screen, just one in which so many elements are broken that they don’t display….

And then things get worse, as a few button presses later, you see the main S60 menu and Sony Ericsson homescreen both trying to display at the same time….

Satio Verdict

The one constant in the smartphone world since its inception (with the Nokia 7650 and Palm Treo 180, arguably!) is that no device is perfect. There are usually a number of distinct positives, a few innovations, some nice styling points and…. a few downsides, ranging from mild annoyances to complete showstoppers. These attributes, in the Satio’s case, read as follows:

Good:
12 megapixel camera shows potential, with Xenon flash and LED video light, though results are patchier than you’d expect, at present, and the Xenon flash isn’t used to full effect
Nice camera controls, well built (stainless steel) camera protective slide
Graphically advanced OMAP3 chipset, plus 256MB of RAM should mean blinding performance (though we haven’t really seen it so far)
3.5″ transflective screen is a good all-rounder for a camera phone, even the resistive touch works well outdoors, and the interface is well thought out

Bad:
Generally plastic, cheap feel to the casing and buttons (camera cover excepted), general fingerprint nightmare
Proprietary USB/charging/audio socket (efficient in terms of connectors, but non-standard)
Low capacity 1000mAh battery, galling considering the huge bulge allowed for the camera
Ultra cheap SIM card caddy system
No over the air firmware/app updates – yet
Little has been done to the baseline S60 5th Edition code, and what has been added has been added in an inconsistent way
Some holes in the application set, plus the PlayNow Web-based system is clunky and can thoroughly confuse the user
Even at R1C firmware, three months after launch, some huge bugs remain. Poor quality control on Sony Ericsson’s part and attention is desperately needed

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Review_Sony_Ericsson_Satio_part_4-Media_Suite_and_Wrap-up.php 

Sony Ericsson Satio (4)

In a nutshell, the Satio can be seen as a Nokia 5800 with flashy homescreen and a much better camera. But that’s a big simplification, as you’ll hopefully see below. The Nokia 5800 reference is apt though, since this too uses the somewhat klunky baseline S60 5th Edition interface, with little thought to back porting any of the intuitive kinetic scrolling found in Symbian^2 as has been done for products like the Nokia N97 and N97 mini. In practice, this means fiddly manipulation of scroll bars in all the S60 standard applications, a system that’s rightly been criticised from day one (what you need, of course, in an ideal Symbian touch interface, is kinetic/content scrolling as well as scroll bars).

The Satio’s designers have even gone to great lengths to disguise the lack of kinetic scrolling in the main applications menus by organising all the 50 or so icons such that every page starts off with twelve or less, so that the new user doesn’t even have to think about scrolling down – but this does mean more taps, to navigate into the different folders. For example, newly installed third party apps appear in ‘My apps’, inside an ‘Organiser’ folder. You can move icons around, of course – this is S60, after all – but you’ll then possibly create app screens of more than twelve icons, leading to the dreaded and aforementioned scrolling.

In fact, and somewhat confusingly, the Satio does have kinetic scrolling – at least, it does in the Sony Ericsson-added bits. These comprise the fancy new homescreen and the Media suite (of which more in the final part of this review). Having the two different systems in the one device is a little disconcerting, but then such oddities are part of many other smartphones these days – witness the Windows Mobile world, for example – so this isn’t an isolated case. It is disappointing though, with the power of the OMAP3430 chipset and its integrated co-processor, to have many screens which are so markedly bare bones. Just the occasional fade-out, fade-in transition, plus animations in the custom Sony Ericsson-written bits, give away that there’s a graphics chip inside.

The homescreen is static but has four screens of shortcuts, two to the left and two to the right of the central ‘wallpaper’ – you get to each by tapping on its icon or by swiping with your finger. From left to right are favourite people, with the option to ‘call’ or ‘message’ each (and it’s a further tap to get to the appropriate record in Contacts), favourite web sites (curiously, totally independent of your Web bookmarks), photos from your Camera albums (presented in handy filmstrip form, as shown below, tap to set as wallpaper, send to someone else or to view in the Media suite) and shortcuts to your favourite eight applications (curiously managed using a totally different interface to the contacts and web sites panes).

(above) – the homescreen ‘filmstrip’ when it’s all working well, and (below) when it all goes pear shaped and the Satio’s media suite software has crashed for the umpteenth time that day….

Common to all the homescreen panes are four buttons – for a phone dial pad, for the Media suite, for S60 Messaging and for Google Search. Assessing the homescreen is tricky – it certainly offers more functionality than, for example, that in the Nokia 5800, but it’s also inconsistent, both with the rest of the interface and with itself. And it’s ultimately all a little static, when compared to the active widgets on, for example, the Nokia N97. The latter, of course, is plagued with RAM problems when these are used fully, whereas the Satio has oodles of RAM and no widgets. Gah – go figure.

Pressing the central S60 menu key reveals a familiar icon system, even if Sony Ericsson has jiggled everything round a little. Here are the main differences from a typical Nokia S60 5th Edition phone:
PlayNow is a shortcut to the mobile version of the Sony Ericsson content store. Basing everything on the web is simpler than Nokia’s system of using a Web runtime widget, but it has its own issues. Not least navigation. Open up PlayNow and browse around a little. You’re offered ‘Close’ on the right soft key and so you use it. You’d think that this closed down the browser window. Not so. It’s still open in the background but you have to be a Web-savvy geek to find your way back to it via the ‘Internet’ browser’s sub-menu. Instead, next time you tap on PlayNow, you get another instance of Web. And then another (see the ‘window count’ at the top of the photo below). And then another, until you’ve hit the internal limit within Web and everything starts to fall down around you. Confusing for the unwary and extremely inelegant.

A couple of shots of PlayNow in action. Content is quite static at the moment but has the output of a few selected Symbian software houses included, so at least there’s something decent for newcomers to buy…

Note that the system works in landscape (thanks to using Web as the underlying engine) but that, despite the nHD screen, you can’t fit much on a page this way and the user experience isn’t fantastic….

TrackID, Sony Ericsson’s beloved music identification system, is included, and, for current popular music, works rather stunningly. Give it 10 seconds or so of any song, just held up to the Satio’s microphone, and you’re taken to a web page which lists the track name, artist and album, along with the chance to buy the song from your network operator’s music store – an interesting tie-in. For everyday users, TrackID is a potentially showstopping feature, but you don’t have to venture far away from mainstream tastes for recognition to nosedive.

Google Talk and IM+ for Jabber are licensed versions of Shape Services chat client, plus there’s S60’s pretty useless generic IM client as well.

Google Maps 3.0 is included in the firmware and, thankfully, it was easy enough to upgrade this to the latest v3.3.1 – no getting stuck on an old version here.

A trial version of Wisepilot, a real time, online, sat nav application. You can extend its license using phone credit or other payment means. The trial is very short though (5 days?), it had expired even before I got round to trying it properly for the first time… There’s no local storage of maps, let alone preloading, disappointingly, so best stay away from areas with poor data signal(!)….

DataViz’s RoadSync is licensed, for easy synchronisation of your PIM data and email to Microsoft Exchange.

Web publishing is Sony Ericsson’s answer to Nokia’s ‘Share online’, and it’s similarly limited, with just PicasaWeb and Blogger supported out of the box. There’s a ‘New web album service’ function on the menu, but this just brings up the generic PlayNow system without much clue as to where to go next. There’s also a ‘New web site’ function, but this just adds a shortcut to the appropriate mobile site. All half-hearted and you’ll be much better off with the third party ShoZu or similar.

MyLook, a licensed (novelty) Bitween utility that allows your wallpaper to be changed according to time of day, or on a shake gesture, or when you get to a specific location. You’ll excuse me if I don’t get too excited by this one!

Labyrinth, a licensed marble-rolling game, with 10 levels available, the last five of which are locked until you’ve cleared the first five. A nice accelerometer demo and nicely frustrating to boot!

SMS Preview, the popular freeware utility that lets you glimpse incoming SMS without having to stop and open them up properly.
BBC iPlayer downloads – it’s good to see that Sony Ericsson (in the UK, at least) have worked to not only get iPlayer DRM ready in the Satio, but have also included the client in the firmware, saving users having to know where to go to get it. Nice one.

The music and video players, and the photo browser, have all been replaced to some degree by Sony Ericsson’s own media suite (see the next review part for this in detail).

On the negative side, the following applications, familiar from Nokia S60 phones, are missing from the Sony Ericsson Satio:
Nokia Maps, it’s obviously nowhere to be seen on this Sony Ericsson device, though arguably Google Maps and WisePilot take up some of the strain.

Sw_update – or indeed any kind of Over The Air updating. Firmware here is so far only upgradeable via Sony Ericsson’s Update Service on a Windows PC. This is a major downside in 2010, tying updates to a PC seems very old fashioned – and only ensures that most Satio owners don’t actually get round to updating to the latest OS and thereby get bug fixes.

Zip manager. Admittedly this isn’t used that much these days, but it’s disappointing that Sony Ericsson hasn’t licensed this from Epocware as Nokia did.

Active notes. No big deal, I don’t know anyone who uses this odd-ball rich note-taking system (because it doesn’t sync to anything).

Podcasting. Ah yes, this is a biggie for me, and probably for you, the reader, too. Starting life as a Nokia internal project, Podcasting hasn’t been contributed to the Symbian Foundation, meaning that Sony Ericsson would have to follow Samsung in licensing the code from Nokia. This they haven’t done, but thankfully the third party tool Escarpod installs on the Satio and helps fill the gap. Let’s hope it develops further.

Widgets. The Satio does support Web runtime widgets, but there’s precious little preloaded, in contrast to the Nokia N97 and N97 mini which are fairly laden down with them. OK, half of them are shortcuts to mobile web pages, but I’d still like to see more in this department from Sony Ericsson, to get the newcomer off to a good start.

NB. In case you’re wondering why there are lots of photos of screens in this review, it’s because something in the Satio’s graphics system interferes with Best Screensnap most of the time. Ah well….

Other S60 applications not mentioned are largely unchanged from the baseline S60 5th Edition specification, aside from cosmetic differences here and there. In particular, Web has been renamed ‘Internet’ and is the same slightly clunky klunky build as featured in the Nokia 5800. No kinetic scrolling, no automatic full-screen, no next-gen Webkit engine, relatively slow page rendering, and so on. And of course this module is also used as the engine to power the PlayNow system, impacting its performance as well… It’s underwhelming on a 2010-spec phone and here’s hoping Sony Ericsson can update the version of Web in the next firmware – I know it can be done because that’s exactly what Samsung are doing for the i8910 HD.

It’s also worth noting that, among the litany of other bugs and glitches I experienced with the Satio (even at R1C firmware), Web wasn’t entirely stable. In particular, double-tapping to zoom in, one of the most used functions in a touchscreen browser, often didn’t work at all on the review unit – I’m still trying to work out whether this is a Web or touchscreen-driver or hardware issue.

Search is implemented in a two-stage system, with an early version of Google Mobile Search implemented from the homescreen, and with a version of the standard S60 application data search available in the Organiser menu. Sadly, it’s buggy in the extreme. Searching for a few characters of a contact name (the simplest possible local search) took minutes – there’s obviously something horribly wrong in the code here – yet another fix for ‘R2D’ or whatever is the next firmware for the troubled Satio?

On balance, though, the application bundle is comparable with that on most Nokia S60 5th Edition phones, though one or more of the differences noted above may put some hardened Nokia fans off and it’s fairly obvious that the app mix is less balanced than on the likes of the Nokia 5800 or Nokia N97 mini. But, as with Samsung on the i8910 HD, it’s not too difficult to replace most of the bits you might expect on a Nokia and, glitches aside, there are a few extras which may positively put a smile on your face.

The biggest improvement for the Satio, when compared to the Nokia 5800, the most comparable competitor, platform-wise, is the inclusion of a proprietary media suite, the subject of the final part of my review, written in a way that totally ignores most of the rest of the phone’s interface (including theme – Media suite is resolutely black). However, it’s consistent with other Sony Ericsson phones that have gone before and uses a fairly obvious ‘direct manipulation’ metaphor (e.g. iPhone-like), so finding your way around is rarely a problem.

Within each media suite pane, top and bottom toolbars fill with icons (up to eight in all, in extreme circumstances) – if the thing you want to do can’t be done by just tapping on the media item in question then you can usually find an icon for it on one of the toolbars. Like most of the rest of the Satio interface (excepting the homescreen), the media suite functions work just as well in landscape mode (by turning the device on its side). Most screens twirl, slide and jiggle into place here, with good use being made of the graphics power under the hood.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Review_Sony_Ericsson_Satio-part_3_Applications_and_interface.php 

Sony Ericsson Satio (3)

Theories about Xenon proving too costly, too bulky, too battery-unfriendly and too specialist, have all been shot down in flames at various points. We had the Nokia N82, a candy bar with small screen, then the Nokia 6220c, aping the N82 but with lower build quality and price to match, then the Samsung G810, an industrially designed chunky dual slider which also featured optical zoom but which was never supported or updated by Samsung, rather sadly.

And now we have the Sony Ericsson Satio, bringing a top notch 12 megapixel lens and sensor, along with Xenon flash and a LED video light, in addition to a giant 3.5″ touchscreen and S60 5th Edition. It’s true that Sony Ericsson hasn’t done much to the S60 codebase in general, that there’s no kinetic scrolling and that (as I write this) there are significant bugs right, left and centre, but there is a lovely new interface for the camera software and that’s the area I’m going to be concentrating on in this review part. See the final part 3 (to be published when Sony Ericsson has issued the first major firmware update for the Satio) for wider discussion of the Satio’s applications and general smartphone use.

As described in part 1 of this review, the Satio’s camera is hidden behind the singlemost impressive part of the phone’s case, a steel sliding section that, when retracted, also starts the Satio’s Camera application. This is also tied in with all the buttons on the ‘top’ (as the Satio is held in landscape/camera mode):
zoom out/in (though, as ever, digital zoom is strongly discouraged – you don’t gain any extra detail, you simply introduce extra digital artefacts into the centre of your subject area – it’s also worth noting that zoom in video mode is equally as bad, as on most other camera phones – there’s no intelligent digital zoom, as on the Nokia N86)

the ‘Album’ shortcut (at any point, pressing this switches to a ‘review’ mode, where you can swipe through your photos)

the stills/video toggle (soooo much easier than fiddling about in a menu or trying to hit an on-screen icon to change mode)

the shutter button (this is large and of high quality, with nigh-on perfect feel under the right hand index finger)

In addition to the light sensor, video shoot notification (red) LED, video shooting (white) LED and Xenon flash, there’s also a strip LED which light up blue for a second or so after starting the camera – and I have absolutely no idea what this is for. Comments welcome. Maybe it’s just there to look ‘cool’!

Sony Ericsson has always had its own ideas of what a camera interface should look like and they’ve been tweaking it for their touchscreen phones, with status icons along the top of the screen and camera control icons down the left edge (the right edge is saved for application . And, to be fair, it works much better than Nokia’s attempt for their S60 5th Edition phones, which tend to be marred by a confusing mix of pop-up icon panes and traditional menus and dialogs. The interface on the Satio works very well indeed and I found it intuitive.

Down the left of the interface are:
‘Scene modes’: Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Twilight landscape, Sports, Document, Twilight portrait, Beach/snow

‘Shoot mode’: Normal, Panorama, Bestpic, Smile detection, Touch capture (this last is similar to the systems on other touchscreen phones, where you touch the point in the image that you wish to explicitly focus on)

‘Flash’

‘Exposure’

‘Auto’ – turning this on removes all the other controls, the Satio literally becomes a ‘point and shoot’ camera

The toolbox icon at the bottom right of the screen leads to a custom tabbed dialog with few surprises. Of note is that the default resolution of the camera is actually 9 megapixels, corresponding to a widescreen (16:9) image, scaled similarly to the Satio’s display. For the purposes of the photo tests in this review part, I used the full 4:3 aspect 12 megapixels (4000 pixels by 3000 pixels!) though, naturally. The average consumer certainly doesn’t need 12 megapixels, but what I’m going to be doing here is looking at maximum detail under extreme circumstances.

Photo testing

Here I was comparing identical shots on the Satio with photos taken on the Nokia N86 and Samsung i8910 HD, both also 8 megapixel Symbian smartphones, plus the slightly older 5 megapixel Nokia N96, for comparison.
Shot 1: Sunlight into a garage, high contrast, mix of bright and pastel colours, plenty of texture

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version. Note excellent handling of colours – nigh on perfect, detail and contrast. Very impressive all round)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

As I tweeted recently, the difference between the detail from the Satio’s images and those from the N96’s is startling. Remember that the Nokia N95/N82/N95 (and others) have had just about the best phone camera up until a year or so ago. And yet the N96’s 5 megapixel image is made to look utterly ordinary and rather poor. In the tweet, I proclaimed that, camera-wise, the Satio is to the N95 what the N95 was to the N70 (from 2005).

Looking at the images, the Satio’s has the best colour rendition and detail, though the i8910 HD was only very marginally behind, showing what Samsung’s camera can do under ideal conditions. The N86 made rather a mess of the colours in the wood and its wide angle lens also meant that there was only marginally more detail than the N96’s image.

Shot 2: Sunlight on an open-air subject, macro distance, rich colours

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version. Note excellent handling of colours again – nigh on perfect, detail and contrast.)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

Again the Satio wins out with the best photo. Glorious detail, hyper-accurate colours. The Nokia N86 gets closest to competing, while the i8910 HD’s camera just gets the colours completely wrong and the N96 with its ‘mere’ 5 megapixels, simply seems outgunned.
Shot 3: Indoor indirect/poor lighting, fairly close subject

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

Again, unsurprisingly, the Satio again shows the best detail, albeit showing a little digital noise in the lower light conditions. The N86’s photo looks closest to real life (to my eyes) without too much low light noise, while the Samsung i8910 HD’s camera again tries hard but loses points for overcooking the colours – the green outer ring on the real clock is much richer and duller.
Shot 4: Very dark, subject 1.5 metres away (e.g. pub/club/party shot)

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

Now things start to get tricky for the camera phones. No natural illumination, poor artificial illumination, this is the scenario where you’ll get very disappointing results from most phone cameras. In my somewhat artificial posed(!) shot, the Nokia N86’s photo comes out almost perfect – the combination of large aperture, dual LED flash and large sensor just can’t be beat in this sort of situation. In contrast, the Xenon-lit Satio photo comes over as great looking as a whole but digitally noisy when you examine it very closely. HOWEVER, the other main advantage of Xenon flash is that it’s 1000x faster, meaning that in a real pub or club environment, with people moving/dancing/chatting, the N86’s photo would be at risk of being blurred, since the dual LED illumination needs the shutter to be open for up to 50ms, while the Satio’s Xenon flash would fire in up to 50 micro-seconds. This is fast enough to ‘freeze’ the fastest dancing/movement. Which is better, N86 or Satio? It depends on the sort of low light shots you like taking!

The i8910 HD and N96’s photos are both dull and badly lit by comparison.
Shot 5: Pitch dark, outside, flash range test

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Above is the N86’s photo, click to download the full 8 megapixel version)

Just looking at the two best low-light contenders here, we can see that although the Xenon flash is brighter on the Satio, its camera aperture and sensor don’t compare to the N86’s, which manages to achieve the same illumination range with just a dual LED flash. In addition, as you can tell from the Satio photo, it has severe problems focussing in dark conditions when there isn’t a nearby subject to latch onto. I’ve duplicated this effect with numerous other Satio flash photos, sadly. Hopefully this is something which can be tweaked in a future firmware update. The issue may not affect your party photos, but it’s certainly something to bear in mind.
Shot 6: Night time, street lamps, no flash allowed, testing raw sensor and aperture capability

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

As expected, the Satio and N86 duel it out in their chosen manners. The Satio produces the most detail but also the most noise, while the N86 gathers more light and manages to suppress noise to produce a pleasing result. The i8910 HD result isn’t bad either in this company, while the N96 image shows how far behind “last year’s” smartphone cameras are when the going gets tough.
Shot 7: Late afternoon straight shoot out – Satio vs N86, challenging contrast, light and colours

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Above is the N86’s photo, click to download the full 8 megapixel version)

The Nokia N86 wins out in this final shootout, thanks to much better colour handling throughout, including capturing detail in the sky, while the Satio does manage to resolve finer detail, thanks to the 12 megapixel sensor, but lets itself down in other areas. Download the full images yourself and see what you think.

In summary, I’d rate the Sony Ericsson Satio as having, potentially, the best camera ever put in a smartphone. But, as with other aspects of the phone, its functionality is immature. The N86 being used for comparison is also new-ish, but it has had a chance for several signficant firmware updates. I’d expect the Satio’s camera performance to also stabilise as time goes on. The physical capabilities, allied with a sumptuous interface and numerous ways of shooting (e.g. Bestpic and Smile Detection, subjects for another test for another day) mean that the Satio’s stills camera will stay top (or nearly top) of the pile for some time to come.

And yes, in answer to the ne’er sayers proclaiming that neither will replace a good standalone camera, you’re absolutely right. But for casual use, you’d find it hard to argue that these smartphones can’t get jolly close in terms of results in most light conditions.

Video testing

Maximum video capture from the Satio is at VGA at 30 frames per second – good, but really only matching most Nokia Smartphones from the last few years. As you’ll see from the test video below, like the N97, N97 mini and 5800 from Nokia, there’s not only no initial focus, there’s no pre-focus either, so only objects further than a couple of metres away are in focus. Thus, the birds are clear enough but my face isn’t as clear as it could be.

Also, download the original MP4 clip here as satiovidsample.MP4 (20MB)

Frame rate and overall encoding are decent though – grab the MP4 version above if you can see the clarity in the YouTube version, and the Satio will be OK for most casual video use.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Review_Sony_Ericsson_Satio-part_2_The_Camera.php 

Sony Ericsson Satio (2)

Sony Ericsson Satio review: Shooter by vocation

Introduction

Sony Ericsson have long ago shown that they are not afraid of any challenge, producing handsets that have claimed a top spot on the market. There are still plenty of fans from those good old days that would love to see another market-leading device thrown their way.

A look at what’s between the XPERIA X1 and the Satio is enough to tell you what Sony Ericsson have been up to for the past year. A top-dog Cybershot (C905) and an all-round Walkman (W995) were both compelling enough but none would be trusted to top the portfolio of a company that used to call the shots at the forefront of mobile technology.

So, Sony Ericsson might have been busy cutting costs, fueling the hype behind their new wave gadgets (Satio, Aino and Rachael) or experimenting with Symbian and Android. But there’s little doubt about their full-time job. The Satio is a lot more than its mouthwatering features, full touchscreen debuting Symbian S60 or its 12 megapixel camera. It may be too much to say that all the company’s hopes lie with the Satio but the burden on its shoulders is disproportionate compared to any other flagship device we can think of.

Sony Ericsson Satio official photos

This review, by the way, is coming after a massive spoiler. But the good thing is we know the Satio is all geared and ready to face some serious challenges. An industry leading cameraphone, or top-of-the-line smartphone, the Satio has a clear view of its goal. But you can be certain that its path forward will not be covered in rose petals. Sony Ericsson are in dire need of fresh devices (and cash) and the Satio should not be anything but a bestseller. When you’re trying to turn your fortunes around, you have very little room for error.
Key features
3.5″ 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
12 megapixel state-of-the-art autofocus camera
LED and xenon flash, active lens cover
VGA@30fps video recording
Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI, spiced up with a home-brewed homescreen and media menu
ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX dedicated graphics accelerator and 256 MB of RAM
Quad-band GSM support
3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 3.6 Mbps support
Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS
microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
Built-in accelerometer
TV out
Stereo FM Radio
USB and stereo Bluetooth v2.0
Web browser has full Flash support
Preinstalled Wisepilot navigation software
Office document viewer
Main disadvantages
Xenon flash is not adequately powerful
The S60 5th edition UI isn’t to the best in class standards
No 3.5mm audio jack or a standard USB port
No DivX or XviD support out-of-the-box
No smart or voice dialing
Playing flash videos in the browser easily depletes the available RAM
No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
No stereo speakers
No digital compass (magnetometer)

There’s very little to complain about looking at the list above, but the difference between a moderately successful handset and a blockbuster depends on all the performance you can squeeze out of those features. And with the Symbian S60 touch reincarnation hardly the most heralded OS on the market, the job gets even more complicated.

Sony Ericsson Satio at ours

The competition is at an all-time high in the premium segment, Sony Ericsson won’t enter the battle unarmed. The sleek Satio knows it has a trick or two up its sleeves and is eager to show the world its worth. And here we are revealing those secrets for you, starting with the design and handling on the next page.

Unboxing meets expectations

The Sony Ericsson Satio comes in a pretty compact box, which made us worried that there wouldn’t be enough stuff inside to justify the price tag.

As it turned out, our worries were unfounded. The box has all the things the vast majority of users will ever need. Along with the handset itself, you get a wall charger, user guide and a USB cable for connecting your Satio to a computer. There’s also a stylus in there but since we aren’t great fans dongle-style ones we hardly ever took it out of the box.

Exploring the Satio retail package

Unfortunately, the headphones are a rather basic set. We got a one-piece handsfree, which is a major letdown, given the absence of a 3.5mm audio jack on the Satio. We have reason to believe though the box contents are market dependent and luckier users may be treated to a two-piece headset with a 3.5 mm adapter on the remote, or even a TV-out cable.

We certainly cheered the 8GB microSD card we found inside the box. The Satio’s syncing software comes preinstalled on the card, so all you need to do is plug the USB cable in the handset and install it right form there.

Finally, there are some quick-start guides in the box too, if you need tips about handling the phone.
Sony Ericsson Satio 360-degree spin

At 112 x 55 x 13 mm the Sony Ericsson Satio can be slipped into most pockets without causing too much of a bulge. It’s not what you’d call a compact set but the 3.5″ touchscreen is a pretty good excuse. The extra girth around the lens is about what you would expect in a device boasting a 12 megapixel camera.

We are pleased however with the solid feel that the 126 grams give the handset. More importantly though, handling the phone is quite comfortable – most of the features are within thumb’s reach and the active lens cover and handy camera controls are very user-friendly.

Design and construction

The Sony Ericsson Satio comes in a choice of three different colors – black, silver and bordeaux. Having had the black version for a preview we have to admit the bordeaux paintjob is hardly as inspiring. We suspect it has something to do with the shiny red plastic being a bit too feminine for us.

The body of the Satio is almost entirely made of plastic, which looks pretty nice but we still prefer some metal on our mobiles. We are willing to accept this (admittedly high quality) material for the sake of keeping the handset weight down.

Most of the Satio’s front is taken up by the 3.5″ touchscreen with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. The resistive unit supports up to 16M colors and is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the device. It has remarkable picture quality with incredible brightness and excellent contrast for a TFT unit. Images look impressively vibrant on it.

The huge touchscreen excels in terms of image quality

Resistive displays generally need more pressure to get a click registered. As we found out, the Satio’s screen response is just fine – you don’t need to push like your life depends on it. It is by no means as sensitive as capacitive displays but then again, you can use the Satio with a stylus or with your gloves on.

The sunlight legibility of the display is decent, but not as good as the Nokia N97, let alone the Apple iPhone. Still you will be able find a proper angle for working with the phone even in the brightest sunlight if you try hard enough so that shouldn’t be a deal-breaker. Sony Ericsson still aren’t up with the best in this department but they aren’t too far behind either.

There are three hardware controls underneath the display, while the video-call camera, ambient light sensor and the earpiece are on top. There is also a proximity sensor up there to take care of switching the display off when you hold it against your ear in a call. The hardware keys are a bit too thin but still usable. They have decent press and blend well with the overall design.

The Satio’s main controls are a Call and an End key on each side of a menu button. Pressing and holding the menu key launches the task manager – in the long-standing Symbian tradition.

The three hardware keys at the bottom are nice to use * video-call camera, earpiece and sensors at the top

The left side of the Sony Ericsson Satio features the screen lock slider, the proprietary universal connectivity port and the microSD card slot. The absence of a 3.5mm standard jack and microUSB for data and charging are certainly among the small details that compromise Satio’s user-friendliness.

No 3.5mm jack and standard USB port can be held against the Satio

At least the memory card slot is covered by a plastic lid so it won’t fill up with dust. Plus, the Satio is yet another recent Sony Ericsson handset to move away from the Memory Stick storage. The Satio can easily handle 16GB microSD cards, so the transition is pretty seamless.

Design and construction (continued)

The right side hosts an array of controls. The three located towards the bottom are all camera-related. There’s a nicely responsive shutter key with distinct half-press for autofocus, a button to toggle camera modes and a dedicated gallery key. The volume rocker is further up and it isn’t totally irrelevant to imaging either, as it doubles as a zoom lever.

A host of camera controls on the right side of the handset

The power key of the Sony Ericsson Satio is placed at the top, right next to the loudspeaker. As on any other Symbian handset, you can also use the power key for switching profiles on the device.

The power key and loudspeaker are on top

All there is at the bottom is the lanyard eyelet.

The lanyard is attached at the bottom

The back of the Sony Ericsson Satio reveals its other standout feature. The 12 megapixel camera lens is underneath the stylish cover , accompanied by both xenon and a LED flash. The dual flash solution makes sure the Satio is covered in low-light conditions for both stills and video recording. There are also a couple of tiny apertures around the camera lens, which we guess are some kind of light sensors.

The star of the show: 12 megapixel autofocus camera

Having seen the Satio in action in our recent 12 megapixel shootout, praises for the image quality will hardly be a spoiler. The imaging performance is impressive and we’ll gladly shoot a few more rounds with the Satio in the camera chapter of this review.

Removing the battery cover on the Satio reveals the 1000 mAh Li-Po BST-33 battery. BST-33 batteries are nominally 900 mAh so we’re wondering where did those additional 100 mAh get from, but the pure specs are not the point.

Considering the screen size, you can hardly expect miracles from it, but it still managed to last through the day even if we never gave it a break. Since we doubt it any of you will be taking a hundred photos a day and endlessly fiddling with the other phone features, you have good reason to expect a longer gap between charges.

We have to mention that Sony Ericsson have gone for a strange solution for the SIM compartment on the Satio. You place the card on a small plastic tray, which slides in under the lens cover. It’s probably a neat trick to save some space but the plastic tray looks pretty fragile. If you’re in the habit of frequently changing SIM cards you should be careful.

Taking a peek inside Satio

Summing it up, the general build quality of the Satio is quite good and the materials used are both nice looking and durable. The handset feels perfect in the hand and, despite being a bit thicker at the top, it is evenly weighted so there is no risk of it slipping out of your hand.

The ample touchscreen is a treat in terms of image quality, and the response is quite pleasing. The camera controls are very user-friendly, and the active lens cover does well to both enhance the imaging experience and highlight the phone’s key feature. Our main concerns with the Satio are the absence of a standard USB port and 3.5 mm audio jack.

To sum it up, there a few hardware issues, which are not make-or-break perhaps, but still a nuisance in a high-end device. Ergonomics are quite up to scratch though and the Satio handles nicely.
Interface

Sony Ericsson Satio runs the Symbian OS 5th edition but you’d never tell by just looking at the homescreen. It’s a clean break from how other manufacturers see the touch-operated Symbian.

For starers we have prepared a short video demonstration of the user interface of the Satio. It should give you a better idea of most of the changes introduced by Sony Ericsson.

The homescreen uses a tabbed interface but not like the “Vertical icon bar” often seen (though rarely used) in Nokia handsets. There are five tabs, which are in effect five alternative homescreen panes: favorite contacts, bookmarks, home, photos, shortcuts.

The S60 5th edition homescreen has grown tabs

There are five shortcuts on the top of the display, one for each tab. Alternatively, horizontal finger sweeps can be used to navigate between the tabs. The transition itself is visually pleasing with its smooth animations – even if you switch from the first to the last tab, things will roll across the screen with no lag at all.

The other four tabs of the homescreen

The home tab is a typical homescreen – wallpaper, operator name, time and date (though time is also visible in the status row on top) and music controls. The music controls act as a shortcut to the music player and if there’s a song playing it will display track info (with album art) and basic player controls. There are four additional shortcuts at the bottom – Dialer, Media, Messaging and Web search.

The home tab is placed in the center. The leftmost tab is the favorite contacts tab, which gives quick access to a selection of contacts. They are displayed in a list with contact photos if available, so nothing fancy. Tapping a contact, brings up a popup with three options – Call, Message, View in contacts.

The second tab is the bookmarks and it does what it says. You can add new links but you can have eight at most. Another thing we would’ve liked is favicons in the list.

The fourth tab – photos – shows a vertical list of all your photos, sorted by date. It comes with kinetic scrolling and is the fastest way to view the latest photos.

The fifth tab is the shortcuts tab and holds a list of eight shortcuts – be they shortcuts to applications or bookmarks.

The main menu is more standard – there’s a choice between a grid and list arrangement, and by default the shortcuts are arranged so that they resemble the typical Sony Ericsson menu. The icons will feel very familiar to experienced Sony Ericsson users.

The main menu

The rest however is S60 5th edition – the D-pad and soft-key based navigation translated into touchscreen. Lists still require a double tap to select and confirm, while icons take just a single tap. There’s a shortcut to the task switcher or you can long-press the menu key.

Telephony needs smart dialing

We didn’t experience any problems with the in-call performance of Sony Ericsson Satio. Reception levels are good on both ends of a call, the earpiece is loud enough and there was no interference whatsoever.

The two things the phone lacks are Smart dialing and voice dialing. These two are included in other versions of Symbian and should have been available here.

The dial pad

Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can silence an incoming call on the phone by simply flipping it over. The proximity sensor automatically switches off the display when you put the phone to your ear and switches it back on when you pull it away.

In-call performance is very good. Thanks to the proximity sensor the screen turns off automatically while close to your head. There are four big buttons available – mute, hold, loudspeaker and end call. Form the options menu you can find more settings like lock screen and keys, switch to video call, new call, etc.

Making a call, call options

We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on Satio. The handset didn’t perform too well but still scored a Good mark meaning we have seen (and heard) better. You might want to keep a closer look on it when you are in noisier environments.Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G 66.1 62.1 71.7 Below Average
Acer neoTouch 64,6 65,7 75,8 Average
Sony Ericsson Satio 71.8 66.1 78.2 Good
Samsung M8910 Pixon12 75.7 72.8 77.3 Very Good
HTC Touch HD 77,7 73,7 76,7 Excellent

More info on our test can be found here.
Phonebook

Sony Ericsson Satio uses the standard Symbian S60 5th edition phonebook. It has virtually unlimited capacity and functionality is among the best we’ve seen. You can set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

You can order contacts by first or last name and you can naturally search any contact by gradual typing. To speed things along, the search keyboard is special – letters are in alphabetical order and not the entire alphabet is available. For instance, if there are no contacts whose name starts with a C, the letter C won’t appear on the custom keyboard.

The phonebook hasn’t seen much change • the search keyboard is quite clever

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one.

You can also assign personal sound ringtones and videos to the individual contacts. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

Viewing a contact • editing a contact offers a huge variety of fields

The Call log keeps track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.

The Log application

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers (even WLAN connections are included).
Messaging is great

The messaging menu is yet another part of the Symbian S60 UI that hasn’t been modified at all since the Nokia 5800, apart from some reskinning of the icons.

Sony Ericsson Satio supports all common message types – SMS, MMS and email. They all share a common intuitive editor which by this point should be quite familiar to everyone. When composing an SMS, a counter is displayed of characters left up to a limit of 160. An indicator in brackets shows the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

Once you insert some multimedia content or an email address as recipient, the counter is replaced by a data counter showing the size of your email.

Satio uses a common intuitive editor for all your messages

The Satio also features a dedicated audio message recorder. Much like with Symbian S60 v3.2, you can either record the message on the spot or use a sound clip from the phone memory. The interface of all the message editors is quite similar too.

You can activate delivery reports – they come up on the screen as simple pop ups and are automatically saved in a separate messaging folder after that.

The email client is really nice, able to meet almost any emailing needs. It prompts you to choose whether you prefer POP or IMAP access to mail providers that support both. However, it failed to set up the email settings automatically for our Gmail account so we had to do it by hand.

Setting up email is didn’t quite work out

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can check for new mail automatically at a given interval.

You can also schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available when you compose emails offline. This can save you some data traffic charges since you can use the next available WLAN connection instead.

Advanced email options

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Satio. You can also subscribe to multiple folders, so you can check email in folders other than the Inbox, e.g. the Starred folder in Gmail.

The email client gives no reasons for grudges

Browsing emails is a bit weird – sweeping your finger selects text and prompts you to copy it. This means you have to use the scrollbar. Easily copying text is great but we would have liked some way to toggle between scrolling and selecting.

There is also support for attachments and signatures – the Satio meets virtually all your email needs, and with a screen resolution like this, reading emails on the device is a real pleasure.

Text input options

The Sony Ericsson Satio offers a complete selection of input methods The handset has a standard alphanumeric on-screen keypad in both portrait and landscape mode.

The alphanumeric keypad is available in both portrait and landscape modes

It definitely cannot be a match for any hardware keyboard but the Satio full QWERTY fares pretty well. Typing is enhanced by accurate haptic feedback and the keys are large enough for typos to be reduced to a healthy minimum. Unfortunately there is no predictive typing like on the Apple iPhone or the Nokia E71, but we do not consider this much of a disadvantage.

We are really happy with the virtual QWERTY keyboard

Unfortunately, rotating the handset doesn’t bring up the landscape QWERTY keyboard as a default input method and instead you have to select it manually from the menu.

There is also a mini version of the QWERTY keyboard which is only good for stylus use, typing with fingers is possible but it’s a real test of your patience. Its main advantage is that it takes little space on the screen and can be moved around so it doesn’t block your view of things.

The mini QWERTY has limited use

Finally, the Sony Ericsson Satio offers handwriting recognition and actually does a rather decent job of it, recognizing almost all the letters we scribbled in the box. You can improve its performance by taking the handwriting training – this is where you actually show the handset how you write each different letter.

The handwriting recognition worked pretty well for us
File manager is extensive

The Symbian file management system has been top notch for quite a while now, and it’s difficult to imagine what needs to change. The application can basically do anything you can think of with your files – moving, copying renaming, sorting or sending – you name it. You can also password-protect your memory card if you see fit.

The file manager has extensive functionality

Searching for a specific file or directory is also available on the phone. All you need to remember is a part of the desired name and where it was located (phone memory or memory card) Satio will find it for you in no time. There’s also a dedicated Search app, which searches through more than just files – it will sift through your notes, contacts, pretty much anything on the phone.
Media center: Sony Ericsson jumps in where Symbian can’t deliver

The Sony Ericsson Satio Media center is a replica of what you usually find on the company’s feature phones (and Sony Playstations, mind you) – an attractive and convenient way of accessing the media content on your phone.

Sony Ericsson decided to minimize the Media shortcuts (at least at this stage) and there are only three of the usual suspects to make up the main media center menu – Photo, Music and Video.

As you may already guessed the first one will lead you to the main gallery with various options available, the second give access to all playlist and the Walkman and finally, the third one will show you all video clips stored on the Satio.

The media center in portrait and landscape mode
Image gallery

The photo gallery is definitely among the best we’ve seen with great customization capabilities and features aplenty. Some of those options include: one-click access to the latest snapshot you’ve taken, timeline view for your images and tags.

Tags are a very helpful feature offering better ways to make albums – one photo can belong to more than one tag, which you can’t do with folders.

Viewing photos is a joy with the Satio, especially when browsing images fullscreen. When you want to go to the next in line, it doesn’t simply pop up but instead slides in from left or right. The selected photo expands smoothly to fill the screen.

You can reveal the full list of available options by tapping on the screen – delete, edit, use as, assign to contact, slideshow, print tag, rotate, information, etc.

The image gallery • landscape mode

There is also a Pictures section, which stores all the preloaded images that were not taken with the phone’s camera.

Walkman on Symbian

The Sony Ericsson Satio comes with the Walkman music player and all the accompanying extras and eye-candy. Much like the rest of the media menu, the accelerometer is used here for automatic rotation of the display.

Naturally the music player also offers step-by-step filtering of the tracks you want to listen to. The “Now playing” screen is simple but offers all the needed controls and information. The tracks are controlled by comfortably large and thumbable on-screen keys at the bottom.

Music menu • Walkman music player • the homescreen controls

Strangely enough, the Satio offered neither equalizers nor alternative visualizations.
Video player

The video player on the Sony Ericsson Satio has pretty limited functionality compared to the one found on the company’s features phones. It has neither slow-mo playback nor screenshot capabilities.

Our real grudge with the video player however is that there’s no DivX and XviD support – what can we say, LG and Samsung handsets have definitely spoiled us.

With the missing support for the extremely popular codecs, either you’ll have to buy a new application for video playback or you’ll have to convert all your videos by using MediaGo (with all the imposed limitations).

The video player could have used DivX support

When it comes to the watching experience itself, the Satio is nothing short of flawless. High resolution, excellent image quality and 16:9 aspect ratio make for a really nice video combo indeed.
Audio quality

Update Nov 10: As it turned out the Sony Ericsson Satio had some issues with our testing equipment, which prevented it from demonstrating its full potential. Now that we have those issues solved we are able to give you a more accurate representation of the Satio audio output.

The handset performs extremely well in this department, the cut-off extreme bass frequencies being the only slight shortfall. However the frequency response is excellent for the rest of the audible range so we are willing to let that one go.

All of the other readings are pretty good too with the distortion levels simply great. The stereo crosstalk, the noise level and the dynamic range are also pretty good. You can see for yourselves that the Sony Ericsson Satio is quite a gifted musician from the table below. Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Sony Ericsson Satio +0.37, -2.02 -87.0 86.3 0.011 0.125 -84.3
Sony Ericsson W902 +7.31, -2.18 -81.7 84.1 0.0039 0.020 -85.4
HTC Hero +1.04 -2.13 -91.3 92.3 0.458 0.902 -95.8
Apple iPhone 3GS +0.01, -0.05 -92.1 92.1 0.0035 0.011 -95.0
Samsung S8000 Jet +1.01 -2.03 -87.9 87.0 0.015 0.060 -85.9
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD +1.29 -2.74 -87.6 86.6 0.0023 0.255 -85.2
Sony Ericsson W910 +0.25, -1.25 -81.5 82.7 0.0071 0.028 -81.9
Nokia N97 +0.04, -0.27 -90.7 90.7 0.0048 0.896 -89.5

Sony Ericsson Satio frequency response

Best or second best, the Satio camera is a standard-setter

The Sony Ericsson Satio packs one of the first 12 megapixel cameras in the mobile phone world and we did a head-to-head shootout with the other 12MP camera phone – the Samsung Pixon12. With maximum image resolution of 4000 x 3000 pixels, both xenon and LED flash, it makes basic point-and-shoot cameras look obsolete.

The Satio camera interface is reasonably comfortable with the viewfinder occupying only the central part of the screen when regular 4:3 aspect ratio is selected. When shooting in 16:9 aspect ratio (9MP), however, the whole display is put to use from side to side.

On the right side of the viewfinder there are five shortcuts. Those include Scenes, Shoot mode, Flash settings, Exposure compensation and Auto mode. When you select Auto mode the handset takes care to select the most appropriate scene mode for each of your photos and apply the proper settings.

Camera interface • camcorder interface

Opening the settings menu gives you quite a load of customizable options. Those include focus mode, white balance, effects, image stabilizer and self-timer. You can also choose whether you’ll see a preview of every taken snapshot and if the image orientation should be recorded in the EXIF info. The camcorder part of the camera supports a very similar set of customizable settings.

A high-end cameraphone, the Sony Ericsson Satio naturally comes with image geo-tagging too. There is also face and smile-detection onboard, as well as panorama mode and Touch capture.

As the name suggests, Touch capture allows you to focus on any particular subject in the frame by simply tapping on it in the viewfinder. The Satio will automatically focus on it and take a shot.

The mechanical lens cover offers the best possible protection for the lens. Also, it’s an active one – that means that sliding it open launches the camera even if the phone is locked.

The other mechanical shortcuts that work with the camera besides the shutter key are the volume rocker for digital zoom control, a gallery shortcut and a button that toggles between still image capture and video recording.

Image quality

If you are interested in finding out everything there is to know about the image quality of the Sony Ericsson Satio please check out our 12 megapixel shootout article. There you’ll find a pretty detailed analysis of the two best cameras on a mobile phone currently on the market.

To summarize though, the Sony Ericsson Satio produces splendid images that are well beyond the output of any of its 8 megapixel rivals. The colors are vibrant and saturated, the amount of resolved detail is great and the noise levels are tolerable.

While the Pixon12 did have a small edge in image quality and xenon flash performance,the Satio has its own strengths as well. Simply said, the Sony Ericsson smartphone is some optical zoom away from matching low-end and mid-range digicam performance but we guess you can’t have it all just yet.

And here are some samples from the Sony Ericsson Satio camera, some of which you won’t find in the shootout.

Sony Ericsson Satio camera samples
Video recording

The Sony Ericsson Satio will produce VGA videos at 30 fps, equaling the XPERIA X1 achievement. Some of the issues we had with the prerelease Satio unit were ironed out and now everything is up to scratch.

The quality of the videos is really good with an almost unmatched amount of resolved detail, very good contrast and precise colors. While the HD capabilities of the Samsung Omnia HD are out of reach, the Satio is definitely among the top contenders for the world title in the VGA category.

Here is a Sony Ericsson Satio camera video sample for you to enjoy.
Connectivity is full suite

Sony Ericsson Satio is well versed in connectivity – all contemporary means of data transfer are supported.

Starting with the basics, there’s quad-band GSM and EDGE support, as well as 3G network compatibility. The Satio has dual-band 900/2100 MHz support for worldwide coverage, as well as an American version at 850/1900/2100 MHz. Data speeds are quite high with 7.2Mbps HSDPA and 3.6Mbps HSUPA.

Local connectivity offers the obligatory Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP. Satio also comes with Wi-Fi, which includes DLNA support. Oh, and there’s the wired connectivity, which unfortunately makes use of only the proprietary Fast Port connector.

This Sony Ericsson has gone with with microSD cards recently, not Memory Sticks. The card slot on the Satio is is hot-swappable and easily accessible – it’s hidden under a flap on the left side of the phone. It supports cards with a capacity of up to 16GB (it comes with an 8GB card in the box), which is more free space than we’ve ever needed.
Web browser has Flash but disappoints in usability

Sony Ericsson Satio uses the S60 5th edition browser and starts up with the typical Sony Ericsson homepage.

It has quite a few shortcomings in usability though. The kinetic scrolling for one – it doesn’t have enough momentum and stops way too abruptly. The tap-to-zoom feature switches between three levels of zoom: 30%, 100% and 200%. Strangely, it was a little hard to trigger, so you are better off using the zoom bar.

Viewing a page full screen or bringing up the minimap requires two taps, which is exactly a click more than it should have been. And while the browser has support for multiple pages opened at the same time, this only works for popups – you can’t open a new tab manually and dial in a new web address.

The web browser

At least the page rendering is quite good, making all the pages look as if browsed on a desktop PC. The high resolution is also a welcome bonus here, as it allows more content to fit on the screen. There is also a login auto-fill interface that really makes logging online that much easier on a device without a physical keyboard.

Finally, the web browser has full support for both Flash and Java, which means that you can enjoy flash videos straight in your browser without having to use the mobile versions of sites like YouTube.

In terms of speed the browser performs very well but when viewing a YouTube video it would often show a “memory low” warning. The videos still played smoothly though.

So, generally speaking, the second S60 touch-browser is nicely equipped but fails to address some basic usability shortcomings.

Organizer – good old Symbian organizer

The S60 organizer didn’t get tweaked that much for the new OS beyond basic touch optimization. Well, developers were right up to a point but – given the progress of most competitors – some new functionality would have been nice like copy/paste of events in the calendar or a new calculator.

We have to admit though that the calculator is much more comfortable to operate with fingers than with a D-pad, almost as if it was designed for such use from the very beginning. Now let’s just hope new non-touchscreen devices get something better.

The calendar has four different view modes – monthly, weekly, daily and to-do, which allows you to check up all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are the same four types of events available for setting up as on S60 3rd edition – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do.

Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

Some of the calendar views and available settings

Mobile office is also highly functional with preinstalled viewers for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. The PDF viewer was preinstalled on our unit but it’s only a 15-day trial version (duh!) and after that you need to buy it.

Only viewing of documents is supported out of the box

Unfortunately, editing documents is not supported on the included Quickoffice version. If you would like editing enabled you will have to buy the additional license.

The organizer package also includes a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application.

Some of the other organizer apps

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern. If this seems too complicated, there is a quick alarm setup where all you do is set the time and you’re good to go. This is quite convenient for, say, setting up your wake-up alarm.

In addition, the number of alarms is not limited. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone.

We are quite fond of the alarm application
Applications are half useful, half a gimmick

The preinstalled applications in the Sony Ericsson Satio include RoadSync, MyLook and SMS Preview. There’s also a dedicated voice-guided navigation software, which we’ll cover in a later section.

The DataViz RoadSync is among the most useful preinstalled applications if you plan on using your Satio in a corporate environment. In essence, it’s an ActiveSync client, which provides secure, wireless and direct push synchronization of corporate e-mail, calendar, contacts, tasks and attachments.

DataViz Roadsync is an ActiveSync client

MyLook is a fun little app, which runs in the background and changes the wallpaper. It works in one of three modes – timer (changes the wallpaper after a set period of time), shake (shake the phone to change the wallpaper), or based on your temporary location (the current cell ID).

MyLook changes your wallpaper based on where you are

The location-based option is interesting, here’s how it works: it uses Cell ID to detect your position and changes the wallpaper based on that. This allows you to have the wallpaper changed automatically based on whether you’re at work or at home.

SMS Preview is a handy tool, which previews incoming SMS messages on the homescreen so you won’t even have to unlock the phone to read the message. You can set up how long the preview lasts. To start using SMS Preview though, you have to activate the app, which requires sending a single international SMS.

SMS Preview shows new SMS messages on the homescreen

Games department offers two puzzles

There are two games preinstalled on the Satio – Labyrinth and Sudoku. Labyrinth has the same premise as HTC’s Teeter game – by tilting the phone, you guide a ball to an end point avoiding traps along the way.

There are some new obstacles on the way but the essence is the same. The maze is rendered in 3D and the camera shifts position as you tilt the phone. Unfortunately, it does so with noticeable lag, which somewhat breaks the illusion.

Tee… uh, we mean Labyrinth

The second game Sudoku is self-explanatory. It introduces a slight RPG element by letting you create a character with which you can earn prizes and trophies displayed on a shelf in a virtual cafe. You can create or join online cafes to show off your trophies. There’s also an extensive tutorial in case you’ve never played Sudoku before.

Sudoku will eat up your free time
GPS navigation talks you through

The Sony Ericsson Satio features a built-in GPS receiver. Its sensitivity is nothing spectacular – it managed to get a lock from a cold start in a couple of minutes but we had to go out into an open area. It wouldn’t get a lock on the balcony of our office.

The Satio is equipped with a Wisepilot navigation software and offers all the features you’d expect from a proper SatNav solution. There’s voice-guided walk and drive navigation, maps are courtesy of NAVTEQ, there’s 3D view of the maps, extensive route-planning settings, speed camera alerts, POI and weather.

Wisepilot navigation software

Its main downside is that maps are not stored locally but instead are downloaded over the air. A flat data fee is recommended but 1MB of data should get you about 600km of navigation. Still, we would have liked to have a map downloader as well, like with Nokia Maps. It really would have helped in avoiding data roaming charges.

We also wish there was a built-in compass, like on most of its competitors, to facilitate navigation.

Google Maps is included as well if you prefer it.

Google Maps
Final words

Sony Ericsson need a winner right now and the Satio is the phone carrying the torch. It’s equipped with a 12-megapixel camera, which puts it in an elite club. It failed to become the founding member of the club – that title goes to the Samsung Pixon12 – but the Satio offers a level of extra versatility available only on smartphones.

Let’s look away from the camera for a moment though – we paid it plenty of attention in our 12-megapixel shootout. The smartphone capabilities do deserve praise as well.

The Satio runs on the same “engine” as the iPhone 3GS, Omnia HD, Palm Pre and Nokia N900 – an ARM Cortex A8 CPU running at 600MHz along with a PowerVR SGX graphics accelerator. Symbian OS is known to run merrily on much lower-clocked CPUs and with more horsepower it multitasks like a champ. It also sports a brand new look, which certainly helps.

But all that platform talk renders the obvious competitor of the Satio a bit obscure. Yes, the Samsung M8910 Pixon12 is currently the archrival but the 12-megapixel camera is the only ground where these two phones face off. Yes, the Pixon12 offers GPS voice-guided navigation and Wi-Fi, a WVGA AMOLED screen and smooth and silky TouchWiz – but it’s not as versatile and flexible as the Satio’s smartness. The Pixon12 beat the Satio in a pretty close game but it was the cameraphone that lost, not the smartphone.

Samsung M8910 Pixon12

When the Samsung M8920, the worldwide version of the Samsung W880 AMOLED 12M, finally comes out, pressure on the Satio will grow. The M8920 won’t be a smartphone either but optical zoom will sure tip the scales. Until then, have a look at our preview of the W880 to get a taste of what’s coming next year.

Samsung M8920

Going down a notch in the camera department, we find a whole bunch of 8-megapixel options.

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is a ready and willing candidate. Its camera is probably as impressive, but in another way – the still unmatched 720p video recording. The bigger (and AMOLED) screen is worth noting too.

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD

In fact, the real promise is in the recent stir-up at the high end of the Sony Ericsson portfolio. We guess, phones like the Satio and the much-awaited Rachael give credence to the company’s efforts for a comeback. The Sony Ericsson top dogs really need to pull their ranks together to stand up to the competition.

The Sony Ericsson Satio lost the race for the first 12MP cameraphone on the market, but maybe it’s not too late to win the race for widespread adoption. There’s certainly a great deal of hype around it and the phone manages to live up to a lot of it. Of course it will be up to the mid-range reinforcements to follow Satio, Aino and Rachael to claw back some of the market share the company has lost over the last couple of years. But things may as well be looking brighter already with Satio leading the way.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_satio_idou-review-408p9.php

Sony Ericsson Satio

Flagships have a tough time in the phone world. Designed to include every function under the sun and to appeal to the most knowledgeable and tech-hungry users, they inevitably come up short. Witness the Nokia N96 and N97, for example, each plagued by bugs and issues in their first six months. In this company, it’s not a damning indictment of the Satio that it too is equally less perfect. As with the Nokia flagships, there’s lots of potential here – in fact arguably more, let down mainly by silly bugs and a few even sillier hardware design quirks.

Using one of the supplied themes – I do like black text on white background, for better visibility

Ostensibly a tablet along the lines of the Nokia 5800, and weighing in at 126g the Satio distinguishes itself by including the same 3.5″ transflective screen as the Nokia N97 classic – a good all-purpose choice and one which will work adequately even in sunlight, when out and about taking photos. The body’s almost entirely plastic, but solid enough. The huge camera bulge on the back (taking this section to 17mm thick) is understandable, given the Satio’s pretensions, but what’s not so clear is why the main body of the phone (around 55% of the remaining length) is kept so thin (13mm). Given that the battery here is only 1000mAh and that the Satio is patently underpowered, why on earth didn’t the designers allow more of the rest of the body to bulk out a little to accommodate a larger cell – the camera has already put paid to this phone ever being described as “razor thin”, after all?

Note the mix of materials – and I’d just wiped the plastic down on my sleeve! 😎

The camera cover is stainless steel and gorgeous, but the same can’t really be said for acres of plastic around it. Both the (resistive) touchscreen and the battery cover are utter fingerprint magnets – this isn’t a device to pull out after eating fish and chips!

The Satio after a few minutes finger operation – this is your worst case scenario – but still… ugh!

The Satio’s left side houses:

A keylock toggle

A Sony Ericsson proprietary USB port, the single most controversial design feature on the Satio. This handles data and audio/video and, arguably, is far more efficient than the traditional 3.5mm audio/TV jack and separate microUSB port, but efficiency shouldn’t really be the name of the game these days – standards are more important now than ever and the Satio falls down in this respect. It means that when you travel you have to take all the cables with you since you can’t rely on finding the right one at your destination.

A microSD card slot. At least Sony Ericsson has dropped the awfully proprietary M2 card format that absolutely noone liked. A step in the right direction.

On the top is:
A power button

A small mono speaker. Audio quality is surprisingly good, actually, I’d rate it equal to the speaker in the Nokia E75: moderate volume but nicely toned. Mono is a restriction though, compared to other smartphone flagships.

And then down the right hand side we have:

Volume up/down, doubling as zoom controls

Album shortcut, brings up the latest photos and videos taken

Camera/Camcorder toggle. This works very effectively and is a lot better than prodding around on the touchscreen (as in the Nokia touchscreen camera interfaces)

Camera shutter button

All the above buttons are of high quality, despite being plastic inset into more plastic.

Somewhat bizarrely, under the battery, the SIM card is retained in a flimsy toy-like caddy that has to be pulled out and then poked back in again (under the camera). It’s an odd arrangement, but it does work. Oh, and did I mention that the battery’s too small for the job? I’ll be returning to this comment again, no doubt, later in this review, in the context of day to day use and battery life.

Note battery capacity (boo, hiss) and SIM-tray mechanism

Internally, the Satio shows great promise, with 256MB of RAM and an OMAP3 graphics acceleration chip, just as with the Samsung i8910 HD. Of course, like the latter, there’s a lot more to a workable smartphone than high specs, but (again) more of that in a later review part. Having this much RAM means being able to open the largest web pages, hungriest games and maintain a dozen open applications, all without ever worrying about seeing an ‘Out of memory’ error, or having some of your applications closed down. Exactly what’s needed for S60 5th Edition and exactly what Nokia failed to put in their 5th Edition phones so far….

Unfortunately, unlike the i8910 HD, there’s no mass memory chip, so you’re stuck with just the 60MB or so free on disk C: (this may cause problems long term, as it has on the Nokia N97) and whatever you choose to put into the microSD card slot. Luckily, Sony Ericsson start you off with an 8GB card, handily preloaded with the PC Suite connection software, but Satio power users will want to budget for something bigger. 16GB minimum, I’d suggest.

The surfeit of RAM and the OMAP3 chip mean that general performance is pretty good, and it should only get better once the firmware has matured a little, the bugs quoshed and the OS optimised.

I’ll be covering the 12 megapixel camera in much more detail in part 2 of this review, but suffice it to say for now that it’s very impressive. Focussing is a little slow and images a little duller than the Nokia N86’s, but in every other respect images have great(er) detail. The Xenon flash works brilliantly too, it’s been far too long since I used a new Xenon-equipped Symbian smartphone. Videos come out well at VGA resolution, but the sound capture was far too quiet – as with the Samsung i8910 HD, hopefully this can be fixed in a firmware update.

A stunning camera, watch out for part 2 of my review for sample images and comparisons

The Satio’s application suite and interface will be covered in part 3 of this review. I’m deliberately leaving it to last because the Satio is, as I write this in the last week of November, very buggy indeed. Hopefully there will have been a serious firmware update by the time I have to appraise its software package. Already some shop chains have pulled the Satio from sale because of high returns and I’m not at all surprised. As a geek, I’m resigned to buying bleeding edge hardware and then sitting patiently while the manufacturer fixes bugs and polishes the software, but Joe Public is not going to be as understanding.

Among the bugs I experienced were the freezing up of the media suite and an annoying unresponsiveness to screen taps – not due to the touchscreen itself but seemingly due to an underlying driver bug. I also didn’t like several aspects of the Satio’s new homescreen: the top ‘strip’ of status icons is almost impossible to ‘hit’ without using a stylus, and the homescreen and media suite both completely ignore whatever you’ve set as your theme. So, for example, you set up a nice light/white theme and then find the homescreen and media suite only work in black!

Note black screen, despite white theme

And the above observations are in addition to the other reported bugs in the first shipping version of the Satio. Many have commented that it’s no worse than the Nokia N97 was at launch – but that’s hardly an excuse. Nokia took four months to fix up the N97 with v20 firmware that at last made the most of the hardware, let’s sincerely hope that it doesn’t take Sony Ericsson anywhere near as long.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Review_Sony_Ericsson_Satio-part_1_Form_Design_Build_Quality1.php