Back from the Sony Ericsson Satio launch – first impressions

Last night I was lucky enough to attend a really fun Sony Ericsson launch party – a kind of rebranding of sorts underpinned by the slogan ‘make.believe’ and used to officially launch the company’s new flagship Satio handset. The night also involved a fantastic live musical performance: A modern interpretation of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, co-produced by Goldie (and others), featuring artists such as Miss Dynamite and Kano accompanied by The Bays and The Heritage Orchestra.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the tech. Here are my first (brief) impressions of the Sony Ericsson Satio.

satioThe 3.5 inch touch screen device is much more svelte in real life than photos suggest. And the protruding lense cover protecting that headline grabbing 12 megapixel camera is a lot more subtle too. It gives the impression of being practical but also adds a defining design cue that I really liked.

The Satio is a lot lighter than you’d expect too but feels very solid and of high build quality. There was no obvious weak spots in the casing from my brief hands-on. Aside from the camera’s specs, the other standout feature is the screen itself. While it’s resistive (and we all know how I feel about resistive screens), it has an nHD (640 x 360 pixels ) resolution and in the dimly lit night club where the event took place, simply looked stunning.

On the software side, Sony Ericsson’s starting point is Symbian S60 5th edition – think Nokia’s Xpress Music 5800 or to some degree the N97 – but they’ve redesigned the UI for some of the phone’s key applications, such as its media features where it borrows from the PlayStation’s XMB UI, for example (see the video above). It’s a big improvement over standard S60 5th but it falls down in that SE haven’t given the same treatment to other parts of the OS. The device on show was also not the latest firmware I was told and it definitely had a few software bugs, which was a little disconcerting so close to release, although I was assured that many of these kinks have already been ironed out. Watch this space for a full review soon.

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last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

3 Responses to “Back from the Sony Ericsson Satio launch – first impressions”

  1. Must have been fun to attend such a party, playing around with some great phones (like the Satio) and in the meanwhile enjoying live music! For me the Satio is pretty much a competitor the Iphone even though it has some characteristics that I don't like. For example the touch sensitive screen not being available in all menus. The video above is probably taken at the inauguration party? The video is not that clear and there's a lot of noise, but hey I'm just jeaulous I couldn't visit that party!

  2. Steve O'Hear says:

    The video was taken at the party and the lighting was far from ideal but I thought it was still worth sharing. Not sure what you mean by “the touch sensitive screen not being available in all menus.” The party was fun though 🙂

  3. onlineshopping says:

    The iPhone is a very smart phone; it has very advance technological features compared to other phones on the same league. But on the other-hand the all new Satio from Sony Ericsson is a beast compared to the iPhone.

    The Sony Ericsson Satio is a very intelligent device incorporates with 12.5 megapixel onboard camera and 3.5 inch widescreen (16:9 aspect ratios)

    source:
    pay as you go mobile phones

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