SE-First.com

12.57: Arriving at out destination! Since I haven't been to this place before, a little help on the directions would be more than welcome - let's fire up Google Maps on Satio. The application is pretty standard on all Sony Ericsson phones, as well as on most other mobile phone manufacturers actually. So it will look familiar if you have seen it before. I'm using the walking directions (first and second screenshot below) to show me the way. The GPS in Satio gets a satelite-fix pretty fast if you are in plain view of the sky, AND if it is supported by the A-GPS function (which determines your location roughly via the mobile network and uses that information to supply the GPS module with initial positioning data).

As you can see, no far walk necessary :) Of course, the google maps version also provides the "StreetView" functionality, where available.

Satio comes pre-loaded with a 30 days trial version of the "Wisepilot" navigation software. It is an off-board solution, meaning that maps etc. is always downloaded from the internet. In addition, after the trial period, you have to pay a yearly fee depending on the map coverage needed. Since I didn't use the software yet in a car, I'll update you guys later on on the functionality of this navigation software.

17.30: The day is slowing coming to an end, and surprisingly, we saw the fist snow of the season. Here are a couple of pictures shot with Satio, some of them using the dedicated "Snow Scene" setting of course :-)

The lower left picture was taken using the panorama function by the way, the upper two with 9MP (16:9 ratio), the lower right one with 12MP resolution.

21.00: The day is definitely over now, and the last thing I want to do today is synchronizing and backing up Satio with my laptop. Therefore, the PC Suite 6.0 is necessary, which can be downloaded here. This software runs under Windows only, this unfortunately is not for Mac users :-(

The PC Suite offers the following functions:

• Synchronize e-Mail, contacts, calendar, tasks, notes and bookmarks with Outlook
• Backup and restore data from and to Satio
• Connect the laptop to the internet via Satio's network connection (aka tethering)
• Manage files on the internal memory and the memory card
• Manage, archive and send text messages (SMS)
• Manager, archive and send multimedia messages (MMS)
• Manage phonebook contacts
• Manage calendar entries
• Update Satio with the latest firmware (if available)

Synchronisation and the different editing functions work pretty straight forward, one word to the backup-functionality: it does not seem to be possible to backup settings, such as email-settings, network-settings, MMS configuration etc. At least when I updated my Satio, I had to re-configure those settings, although an automatic backup and restore is triggered before and after the update. Nicely done is the full backup (including Memory Card content), where the user can chose on a folder-level which files have to be included in the backup.

The firmware update itself goes smooth, without the need of pressing any button-combination whatsoever to put Satio in update-mode, as it is the case with other phones from Sony Ericsson.

22.30: Time to go to bed! What should I make of Satio? It definitely has two sides: a very charming one, where basically everything entertainment-related is fun to use. The decent musicplayer, the videoplayer on the big screen, the excellent camera with its different settings and functions. The browser is good, but a bit slow, the integration into Sony Ericsson's PlayNow arena is well done for the music-part. The at the moment still very empty store for applications is certainly one of the big downers, considering the tons of applications for Symbian S60 'out there'.

Hardware-wise, a capacitive screen would have increased the usability of the native Symbian S60 5th edition massively. It would have made the sometimes unlogical menu structures and cumbersome double-clicking at least a bit more endurable. Before I go to bed, I have to do one more thing: plug Satio into the charger. One day of a bit more than regular usage drains the battery pretty fast, especially if you are using 3G networks.

Good night everyone, see you another day, probably with another phone at that time :-)

Thanks for reading, and if there are any questions left, feel free to add a comment below.