One day with Satio - the slightly different review
Friday, 16 October 2009 11:03 | 
Written by rog | 
11.00: Back on the road again, heading for the 2nd destination of the day. This time by train, for about 2 hours. Enough time to relax, listen to some music and browse the web, the two other main parts that the Entertainment Unlimited brand wants to focus on. Before we go into the details, I have to say: the musicplayer is pretty darn convincing! Even though the headset looks cheap, the sound quality is very decent.
Besides the camera menus and the 5-panel-standby menu, Sony Ericsson also adopted the music player UI pretty massively. Good thing! The mediaplayer looks familiar for people who already owned a Sony Ericsson Walkman Handy before. In order give you some live impressions of how the mediaplayer-part looks and feels like, the video below:
Doesn't look too bad, does it? And I have to say that this part is really the one that feels the most "modern" one - kinetic scrolling, one-click actions only (unlike with the original S60 UI where there are sometimes really annoying double clicks necessary in order to complete an action). Sony Ericsson did also a good job with its Panel Standby, which basically provides 5 panels: Contact Shortcuts, list with webiste bookmarks, Standby screen with shortcuts to phone function, media player, messaging and search, Picture browser and last but not least a list with shortcuts to applications or bookmarks (which is quite redundant with the second panel...).
There is a guy sitting in the train next to us, fiddling around on his iPhone. A short peak, it looks like he is just buying a song in Apple's iTunes store - on the phone. "Entertainment Unlimited", I think - wait a moment: can I do the same with Satio? On the iPhone, buying music on your phone is as simple as it gets - click on the iTunes store, search for your song, buy it with one click (as long as you have your credit card details set up with apple).
There is no dedicated application on Satio to buy media online. Instead, there are two shortcuts to Sony Ericsson's PlayNow-Arena website, one in the applications list, the other in the musicplayer. The website that is presented on the Satio looks pretty neat:
The screenshots above show the process of buying a song. There are also applications, Themes/Designs, Ringtones and Wallpapers - some of them for free. The website seems to be heavily localized - as you can see, in Switzerland there is the possibility to pay either by credit card or by a premium SMS (which is the much more expensive option!). An account on the PlayNow-Arena is a precondition and can be generated directly on the phone. The credit card can be linked to the account so the number doesn't have to be entered for each and every purchase. What I am missing: a song preview function. This is available on the regular playnow-arena website, but it is missing on the mobile version.
12.00: I just purchased a couple of songs, so I don't feel too old-fashioned next to the guy with the iPhone :) It works pretty well, although the whole process feels a little bumpy. There are a lot of songs and albums offered for purchase, for games and applications, the opposite is the case. Only a handful of software is available via PlayNow at the moment. It is unknown if there will be more apps & games available in the near future via Sony Ericsson's service, or if the user will have to collect software from different websites just like in the past. Here, Apple's AppStore or Android's Market have clear advantages.
12.15: Phone call! The sound quality is decent, even in the train at full speed.And the caller seems to understand me well too, so no problems with that. During the call the options as shown in the middle screenshot below are present. The phonebook is shown in the right screenshot. Unfortunately, as with all the other original Symbian S60 applications, scrolling works only by draging the outer right scroll bar up and down. The caller ID picture is shown below the name, when the corresponding contact is selected, which is a little confusing.
Alright, call done, next thing: Satio's browser. To make it short: it renders pretty much every website beautifully and correct, but it takes time. In combination with the resistive touchscreen which makes the navigation on the websites somewhat unprecise, the enthusiasm for the browser is contained.
Well done is the visual go-back mode, the last visited pages are shown as a preview. A specific area of a website can be zoomed into by double-clicking on the desired spot.The browser is also capable of showing a lot of flash content, such as Youtube-videos or other flash-based content.
