Window shopping can get as boring as the sheer fact of doing that, yet on special occasions it can bring a lot of interesting finds. But it would be a shameless lie to say that I haven’t looked forward to this particular photo oriented flagship smartphone to finally materialize in UK mobile shops. And now, after having seen the new toy in ‘person’ and gathered as much impressions as humanly possible in 5 minutes, I feel like my initial skepticism towards Sony Ericsson’s Satio shouldn’t go unpunished for various reasons.
Finding the right spot…
At the very core, Satio (also known as Idou) is the latest Sony Ericsson’s weapon of choice in the crowded multimedia smartphone segment.
A noteworthy fact is that it’s the very first phone from the Japan and Swedish joint company to see the S60 treatment, the touch oriented Symbian 5th edition operating system to be precise. After outsourcing of Symbian platform and making it more accessible to other major players at no additional costs, Nokia basically left the mobile industry in guessing about what will happen next. While this is definitely worthy a more in-depth article, for now it’s suffice to say that Nokia in a smartly fashion moved it’s focus away from Symbian to a seemingly more perspective in future growth platform for their high-end products, and naturally, that’s exactly where Maemo OS comes in.
It didn’t take too long for competing companies to capitalize on the opportunity to use Symbian as a software platform for their own flagship products, however the means of rival companies choose to fight for the supremacy in higher segment – faster processors, better screens or more megapixels – hardware, in short, may very well be flawed idea by design. Why is that even relevant to Satio?
A quick glance over to the closest rival’s short-lived fate – the Samsung I8910HD – and it becomes clear, that Symbian OS is no longer viewed as an effective way to gain more ground on the still fairly solid in demand higher-tier phones segment. So, from that point alone, Satio is an interesting product, an attempt to make touch-screened Symbian phone as attractive as possible to anyone who seeks a competent smartphone in the highly competitive world of the iPhone and Android OS counterparts.
Speaking Satio…
So without further pondering on whether Symbian is getting enough attention from 3rd party developers or whether it creates enough friction to stay relevant in the long run, let’s finally take a closer look at what is certainly a curios looking full touch-screen phone, the Sony Ericsson Satio.
