Sony Ericsson Satio

the box

So I managed to persuade my sister Jannah to lend me her Satio for a week so that I can give it a proper testing and review for this review blog here. The Satio’s firmware has been upgraded to the R1CA037 version which supposedly fixed some of the complains that the early adopters have noticed from the initial release.

The first thing I did was to do a hard reset. *#7370# code applies as the Satio is running Symbian S60 5th Edition not unlike my old 5800. The Satio comes with roadsync preinstalled so I just entered my settings and synchronized my contacts from my corporate outlook account. I find maintaining just one source of data quite convenient as I only have to sync to get all my data in any device that I get.

Jannah already had Gravity running and that’s a good thing as this has always been my favourite twitter client on the s60.

My plan to do a full comprehensive review of the satio was a bit stunted due to the fact that I was trying to hack the satio so that I could install the nokia facebook app on it. Jannah was complaining that the satio didn’t come with a proper facebook app. So when I finally manage to hack the phone it turns out that it actually DID have a facebook app. You just have to look for it in SE's download section thingy.

AAAnyways, with that out of the way I decided to take the phone to the office. Took a few photographs on the way to the lrt station. The camera is by far the main highlight of the device. With its xenon flash the camera is well equipped to tackle and lighting conditions.

nite pic

U probably don’t really need 12.1 mp on a camera anyways. There are the standard options that you can get on a typical digital camera. The picture sizes can be set according to different ratios. 16:9 widescreen shots look cool for a more cinematic effect. You also Bestpic options, widescreen and your smile detection features. It’s definitely one that you can call a Camera with a phone.

droplets..

The one complaint that I could have have is on the battery. The satio’s battery is basically the same capacity as the K800i. With extensive usage of 3G data, camera wifi and Bluetooth, its unlikely that the phone can even last the whole day. By the time I finished the day, the phone was almost flat.

macro

In conclusion, the satio’s saving grace is its camera. The familiarity of symbian S60v5 is all good but I’d wonder why SE didn’t opt for the widgetized version that you get with the N97. The satio just feels like it has so much potential but you just can’t help but feel let down by the implementation.

But then again who knows? A few firmware updates here and there, u might just get a phone that can live up to your expectations.