SE-First.com

07.45: In the bus now to the first location of today's program. A good opportunity to finally configure my mail accounts! As mentioned before, there are several ways to connect yourself to the mail provider. In my case, I am using the IMAP protocol. One positive side-effect of switching mobile phones constantly is that I know my e-mail connection parameters by heart :) I'll skip the usual settings (username, mailserver etc.) here, the more interesting feature is the following.

So I basically can tell Satio on which days, and during which times of the day I want my email checked automatically at what interval. Since I don't want to be disturbed on Saturdays and Sundays and between 22.00 and 6.30, I set the restrictions accordingly. In addition, I can also instruct the phone to automatically download mails when I am in my home network only - we don't like unwanted roaming charges, do we? :) There is one drawback though: a maximum of only two mail accounts can be set up for automatic download...

Alrighty, let's close the settings wizard and download the mails! The messaging application shows the actual numbers of SMS, mail accounts etc. By tapping on the desired mail account, the detail view opens:

The mails are organized by "Today", "Yesterday" and "Older". The middle screenshot above shows an opened mail - by clicking on the attachement symbol, a list with all attached files appears. The attachements can be downloaded individually and saved/opened on the phone - if the corresponding viewer application is installed. By default, Satio can handle PDF files (15 day trial version of Adobe Reader LE is installed) and Microsoft Office formats (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) via QuickOffice.

OK, time to write a mail myself! Satio knows a couple of ways to input text: alphanumeric keyboard with text prediction (T9-like), if you're OK with using the pen then the mini keyboard or the handwriting recognition is for you, and the most convenient method to type with your bare finger only is the landscape fullscreen keyboard. No matter which method is used, the phone confirms each tap on the screen with a short vibration (the intensity of that vibration can be chosen from 3 different levels, editable in the profile settings). Considering the screen is a resistive one, it is pretty sensitive. However, it doesn't reach the convenience of a capacitive touchscreen where basically a very soft touch is enough to make the phone react.

In addition, it can be confusing if you use the fullscreen keyboard to input text into an application when the phone is in portrait mode, since you have to turn the device for entering your text. Also, the keys are quite far away from each other if one is using the thumbs to type - here (and only here!!) a smaller screen would be more handy :)

09.00: We reach our first stop, an exhibition on medieval markets and crafts, all beautifully set up in an ancient castle. There is a lot to see, e.g. how monks used to make beer in the monasteries (I have to say though that I am glad to live in these modern times now, that monk-beer somehow looks funky :) ) Or the bookmakers at that time, they had to bind each and every book by hand, with only a little help by a "machine".

Anyway, time for the 12MP camera in Sony Ericsson's latest Entertainment Unlimited phone to come to action. It is activated by either sliding open the solid camera cover at the back, or by pressing the dedicated camera button on top of the phone. There are a number of settings available, here is a list with the most important ones:

Scenes:

• Auto
• Portrait (emphasizes skin colors)
• Landscape (sets focus to infinite)
• Twilight Landscape
• Sports (short aperture time to catch fast movements)
• Document (sets focus to macro mode and adjusts contrast settings)
• Twilight portrait
• Beach/Snow (for pictures with high portion of white)

Shoot modes:

• Normal
• Panorama (auto-stitches 3 pictures to each other, including automatic guide on where to move the camera. Very well done!)
• Best Pic (takes 9 pictures in a row, so you can catch that smile together with the eyes opened :) )
• Smile Detection (automatically shoots the picture when the camera detects a smiling person)
• Touch Focus (touch where you want the picture to be focused, and the camera immediately captures a picture)

Various photo settings:

• Picture size: (2MP (16:9), 5MP (4:3), 9MP (16:9), 10MP (3:2) and 12MP (4:3)
• Focus setting: Infinite, Auto, Macro, Face Detection
• White Balance (different programs)
• Image Stabiliser (only available if flash is disabled)

Various Video settings:

• Video format: VGA (640x480), QVGA (320x240), Picture Message
• White Balance (different programs)
• Various video effects such as Black & White, Solarise etc.

Besides those settings, Flash can be set to enabled/disabled/Red-Eye-Reduction, Geo-Tagging On/Off (the phone saves the GPS location with the picture if turned on) and the exposure time can be increased or decreased manually.

Enough talking now, here are a few camera samples (click on each image in order to the original file):

The second picture was taken inside, the other two outside.

Some low-light pictures from an event earlier that week:

And alst but not least, a video taken inside an event, pretty low light, and pretty loud environment:

Satio low light video (MP4, 9.5MB, Right-click and "Save as..." to your computer)

More camera samples later on in this article, you can also check out this article (those pictures were taken with a pre-production firmware though).

A few words on the Satio's capabilities as a snapshot camera: under daylight conditions, the time it takes to focus an object is about 1.2 seconds. In dark environment, it takes the mobile phone camera about 2.5 seconds for focusing (mainly because the camera module has to use the photo light in order to focus correctly). Another important figure is the time until the camera is ready. Here, we measure about 4.8 seconds from complete standby (means: black screen) until a picture can be taken. If we do the maths now, we can conclude:

1.2 + 4.8  = 6 seconds from standby screen until picture is taken (reaction time of the photographer excluded :) ) A pretty decent reaction time in our opinion!