I’ve just got back from the Symbian Exchange and Exposition (SEE09) at London’s Earls Court where I had a one-on-one press briefing with Anders Westin, Sony Ericsson’s Head of Software Relations, Symbian Software.
We had an interesting chat about the company’s “commitment” to Symbian, whether or not Sony Ericsson can continue to afford to support a multi-platform smartphone strategy (Symbian, Android and Windows Mobile), and the issue of app store fragmentation. I was quite direct in my questioning and Westin kindly played game.
However, it was when I raised some of my criticism of the company’s flagship Symbian smartphone, the just-released Satio, that things turned a little odd.
I asked a very simple question: Why did Sony Ericsson ship such a small capacity battery – 1000mAh – with the Satio, a 3.5 inch touch screen device with serious Internet ambitions and one that sports a power-hungry 12.1 megapixel camera? Battery life on the Satio isn’t great.
“1000mAh?”, Westin replied. “Don’t you mean 1350mAh?”.
At which point he pulled the back cover off of his Satio to reveal a 1350mAh battery inside.
To say I was stumped would be an understatement. I’ve had access to a retail version of the Satio bought from Carphone Warehouse here in the UK for a couple of weeks now and I was sure that said device ships with a 1000mAh battery. Maybe I was wrong.
After leaving the briefing I bowled up to the Sony Ericsson stand on the exhibition floor where the Satio was on show and inquired about battery capacity. “1000mAh” was the reply. When I returned home, I also checked our Satio again.
Yep, 1000mAh.
Is this a case of Sony Ericsson not eating their own dog food? And if the Satio has room for a much needed higher capacity 1350mAh battery, why isn’t the company shipping it with one?
All theories welcome.
