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I, like many of you, was hugely impressed when Satio was announced and I really wanted this to be the next great handset. The design is aesthetically fantastic and now that it’s here I still think it is as good looking as any phone available today, however, perhaps being something to look at is Satio’s best quality!

Let Me Hold It:

The Satio box is thoroughly unremarkable but the bundled accessories are impressive. The stylus is stylish, the headset is excellent and there’s a pretty substantial video out cable in there too.

Satio Accessories

The device itself has been made with Sony’s special brand of super glossy plastic which attracts finger prints and smudges from passers-by, let alone the actual user. Don’t expect to be able to admire that black sheen AND hold the phone at the same time unless you’re a snooker referee. Perhaps that’s why they chose a resistive touch screen, so you can handle the phone with pristine white gloves. The device also looks like it may be vulnerable to scratches but only time will tell as I’m not about to break out the sandpaper.

There’s a good compliment of hardware buttons including call/end, menu, camera shutter, camera modes, playback, volume and a very handy keylock slider but as with several other touch based devices there’s no direction input keys. As pretty as Satio may be, the straight sided construction of the device quickly becomes uncomfortable and it struggles to sit nicely for single handed use. This is made several times worse should you attempt to use the phone while charging. Once again Sony Ericsson has endeavoured to place the fastport in the worst possible position, here being on the left side just below centre. This means the charger protrudes annoyingly to obstruct either the right-hand fingers or left-hand palm preventing any comfortable hold.

Let Me Use It:

First boot provides a minor tutorial and the antiquated process of calibrating the resistive touch screen. This is a drag at the best of times but here it was a nightmare as the device repeatedly claims “too far from point x”, even when using the stylus smack-bang in the centre of each throbbing dot. I don’t know if this is common to all Satio’s but I experienced this on first use and again after another factory reset. Recalibration via the later menus runs without such issues but the accuracy and responsiveness of the screen remain questionable!

Once reaching the home screen things look good with the “Sony Ericsson” standby theme in use. Swiping left and right changes between the five predefined tabs while lists or pictures on these support the kinetic scrolling method everyone is used to, albeit nowhere near as responsive as that on an iPhone or Android device. Instead the scrolling often either fails or overshoots, at least until you get used to using slow and positive gestures…casual flicks are not welcome here. Customisation, meanwhile, is limited to say the least…you get to set the list of shortcuts and that’s it. Other Standby Themes are available but these are dull, offering nothing other than three static icons and custom shortcuts varying only the quantity or location.

Entering the main menu reveals a typical 4 x 3 icon grid and a single press on each continues to the next screen but this is where things start to get messy. Selecting contacts, for example, pops up a bland list of names (with no contact pictures other than the one currently selected) but inexplicably this list doesn’t scroll in the same kinetic manner as the (thumbnail rich) contact shortcuts list on the home screen. No, instead it is now completely the opposite! Trying to “throw” the list up only succeeds in making a selection bar go nuts while the list remains stationary. This selection bar must be grabbed and pushed to the bottom of the list in order to move down…I can only describe this as idiotic and un-natural and it makes accurate navigation of any list a virtual impossibility. The only acceptable solution is to pull out the stylus and drag the bar on the right of the screen, just like using Windows way back before the invention of scroll wheels. At this point the seemingly negligible omission of any direction buttons becomes a critical flaw.

But wait, it gets worse! In case the experience wasn’t yet uncomfortable enough things make a baffling change from single click to double click selection!?! On first encountering this I simply thought the phone was experiencing huge lag, in fact the device is fast, but it soon dawned that the UI was just suffering another irritating inconsistency.

Looking for any opportunity to escape this nightmare I fired up the camera with a satisfying snap of the lens cover. This is good, really good in fact, the 12MP camera doesn’t disappoint and the xenon flash makes indoor snaps easy. There’s an impressive feature set including Smile Shutter, Touch Capture, image stabilisation and BestPic making the camera probably the best thing about this device.

Satio Camera Sample

Of course Satio is Sony Ericsson’s “entertainment unlimited” flagship device so surely the other media features are up to scratch to? Thankfully they are thanks to the familiar, XMB-style Media menu which remains intuitive and benefits from convenient YouTube integration. Kinetic scrolling makes a return here which would ordinarily be great but on Satio it really just adds further confusion to a terribly mixed up control system.

Eventually I had to leave the camera and Media to try other essential components such as messaging and web browsing. Messaging is as disjointed as the rest of the UI! The standard messaging app doesn’t display conversation lists, a separate “Conversations” app is required for such a view. New message notifications ignore this app and lead to the default messaging view while also failing to even preview who the message is from. Upon replying to a text the on screen keyboard does not even appear, making you jab at the screen until it responds and selects the text input area before displaying your selected input method. On screen keyboards leave plenty to be desired too, all feeling a little too unresponsive and inaccurate for fast typing which leads to frequent mistakes. The mini qwerty is laughable and while the full screen qwerty is better there is annoyingly no auto-rotation to change between them. Handwriting recognition is reminiscent of that on UIQ, I like this but many will not.

Web browsing is adequate but the lack of kinetic scrolling again becomes painful while added irritation is provided by the fact that the device cannot automatically switch between network coverage and WiFi. One or the other is exclusively selected and if you want to save entering more menus the only option is to have “Always Ask” activated so that you must choose the connection accessible to you when starting browsing.

I’ve come to realise that Satio is a mongrel, an impure mix of Nokia and Sony Ericsson and with rather more Nokia than I’d have liked (just look at the screen below). Virtually all of my dislikes are due to the S60 OS and the poor execution of it on touch screen devices:

Satio Nokia Nokia Nokia Nokia Nokia

I was yet to use S60 5^th Edition properly until now and perhaps was naïve to think that it would be better than this or that SE would have made better use of it. Unfortunately this device encapsulates the convoluted awkwardness of S60 and compounds it with the worst points of touch screen devices. There is nice hardware here, splashed with a couple of good software elements but there is no consistency and ultimately the user experience is confusing and annoying.

Let Me Get Rid Of It:

I’m bitterly disappointed with Satio, too much of the experience is uncomfortable and while the camera and Media are a saving grace, these are not enough to make me tolerate daily use of this device. If you want an intuitive and responsive touch screen phone, keep looking…and I suggest towards Android and iPhone.

If, however, you bizarrely enjoy the general unpleasantness of S60 5^th Edition and require each of your UI screens to operate completely differently, go ahead, you should at least end up with some decent photos!

Mik

Mik’s Previous Opinions:

• HTC Magic
• Introduction