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As some of you have highlighted there has been one guy that has been and still is very well represented in the photo streams from Flickr in the left pane of this blog. This guy really seems to put the Satios camera to the test. You find all of his pics at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/virgile-fontaine/

I realized that he is actually a colleague of mine and arranged a small interview with him.

So, I’d like to introduce Mr. Virgile Fontaine!

In short – who are you?

I am Virgile Fontaine. I am 29, married and about to be a father (in 3 months).

I work for Sony Ericsson in France since April 2006.

What do you do at SE?

I am working as Technical Support Manager. It does consist in managing firmware and handsets customization approvals for Orange France, all French MVNOs and French retail market.

What was your first thoughts when you got Satio in your hands?

My 1st thought was completely enthusiastic !

And thought : “excellent, the first Sony Ericsson Symbian S60 handset !”

After Windows Mobile, that’s a new step of Sony Ericsson towards “Open Platforms”. From my point of view, this will help to increase the number of compatible applications.

Symbian S60 has a very good User Interface (fully customizable by the end user).

The Satio handset is a very beautiful product : good general hardware quality, very large and good quality of the display.

Furthermore, this handset looks very classy

I guess you are a quite frequent user of cameras? What’s your regular photo equipment and shooting style?

Yes !

With my phones and personal camera I take 20 to 40 pictures a day : of my wife, the street, luxury cars in the street, animals etc.

And in 3 months, I will take some pictures of my daughter

What are your thoughts of Satio as a camera?

Satio’s lens has a very good quality. I used and buy all new Sony camera products (in the past, Sony DSC-T100, T200, T500, H50, HX1 and now T900 and Alpha 550) and I think Satio’s camera has the same quality of a real compact camera.

Picture quality is excellent and I regularly print the pictures I shoot. My friends and family usually think that the pictures weren’t shot with a phone, but with a classic camera.

But I would say that its main advantage is that it’s also a phone

What are your thoughts of Satio as a phone/multimedia device?

Very good : the large display allows a comfortable Internet browsing, and to watch videos on YouTube. The speaker quality is very good, same thing for the ear piece speaker also.

The User Interface is very reactive.

What surprised you the most about Satio?

The quality of pictures and videos made by this camera… oups… I mean this phone !

Some of my colleagues in Denmark did, in my opinion, a very cool initiative as part of the Hopper Invasion campaign. (www.hopperinvasion.com)

The big “chief hopper” went for a boat ride in Copenhagen to reach his/her destination

I’m sure we will see more from this little trip soon but since they did some of the behind the scenes (or actually “on the boat”) documentation using Satio I thought I should give you a teaser here. So here’s a video and some pics, enjoy!

So.. Finally we’ve come to the point where it’s time to announce the top contributor. First I’d like to express my deepest gratitude towards all of you reading and commenting on this blog. It’s been truly amazing to see the community you all have built here.

So here he is, Piotr Mazurkiewicz!

The publication of top commenters about a week ago really shows how passionate many of you here are and even though it isn’t about quantity in the end I think that there has been extremely few comments that hasn’t contributed to the community in one way or the other. This really shows a level of engagement I never would have dared to dream of when starting this initiative.

Choosing Piotr wasn’t really that hard when I (unfortunately) had to narrow it down to one person, he’s been here almost from day one and asked questions, answered other people’s questions and started, or engaged in, lots of very interesting discussions.

Indeed all of you are top contributors in one way and I really would have liked to have the ability of rewarding all of you but unfortunately I cannot, at least not in the way of giving you a Satio. Instead I can only give my deepest gratitude and respect to all of you.

A few days back one of the comment-threads developed into a long thank-you letter from some of you to each other which I find truly amazing and in a very concrete way shows the fantastic community you’ve built here. It actually starts to feel like we’re personal friends now.

I truly hope that you wont feel I made the wrong decision by not choosing you but instead join me in thanking Piotr for his engagement and congratulate him.

A few weeks ago I posted an interview with my designer-colleague Martin. This posting was also a call for questions from some of you guys. Unfortunately it took a while to get the answers gathered but now finally you’ll find a selection of answers from Martin here.

Sandeep wonders  if we could we expect full kinetic scrolling in all the menus in the future?

Martin:  From a user experience design perspective we are seeking any ways that make the navigation and daily usage of a device as “human” as possible. We are looking at physical behavior of things in general, kinetic scrolling is one of them. Technology progress is not always on par with the design ideas, but we are getting there…

Lasses question about using the Satio completely without a stylus?

Martin: I use the fingers only. There might be situations where some of us find it more accurate to use the pen. But for me, the time I take to handle a pen is more than the time to hit the right area on the display with your finger again. So I myself go for the finger.

Novica Josifovski on the similarity between Satio and Aino and about widgets in the future firmwares?

Martin: We are aiming at having a signature design on all our devices. We think that the user interface is a signature in itself and when it’s possible we are keeping the consistency in design and interaction. Of course, there are factors that make the interfaces between phones different. It can be as in Aino and Satio’s case the platform, it can also be screen size or simply the target group the device is designed for. When it comes to widgets going forward – I am afraid I cannot comment too much at this point.

Freddy Rivera on which phone Martin uses, what/why is your favorite phone?

Martin: Favorite phone… hmm, tricky. I use as many different phones as I can. Trying to switch between the models to have a better understanding of their capabilities and always chasing the new idea by using existing solutions. But since I do photography a lot, I had a K800 for a long time and then I changed to K810 – loved the industrial design on that one, still do. The best thing about these two, besides the camera and its interface, was the “blog this”-function. And this is actually when I started to blog frequently. I mean, I never seen a solution where you could so easy capture a moment and almost in real time share it with the whole world, still very proud that we designed it and brought it to our users out there. I am a strong believer of the fact that almost all photography is social in nature, you snap a picture to share it, that’s it! Later I used K850 for a very long time. And as a designer working on all Cybershot products that phone was a confirmation of where we wanted to take the camera design and the mobile photography.

But now with Satio available – this will be definitely one of my favorites

As you understand I use the phone as my mobile office and terminal to all info on the run and the touch interface together with the big display caters for my needs the best, but that’s me.

Moshik on tabs?

Martin: Yeah tabs.. you would be surprised to know how divided opinions are when it comes to tabs – did you know that some people do not see them? Some users are used to so much simpler interfaces that they have hard time discovering the function of tabs. So there you go, we are all different  - and that is the beauty and the most fun challenge of design! Also, must thank you for all the support – you don’t know how much support means to us! Love you guys!

Christian on charging the phone and when to start using it?

I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to devices as you might understand. I don’t like waiting for the thing to be mine, fully up and running. I’m not an expert on batteries, but I know you should charge it 100% first time, then let it go empty and then charge it fully again – that to “calibrate” the cells – but remember, this is a designer talking battery technology…;)

There were also some other questions that perhaps wasn’t fully intended for Martin, I’ve tried to write some answer to those myself:

Manish on capacitive touch, when is it due for us?

Well not in Satio. Aino however has a capactive touch screen.

Piotr Mazurkiewicz and Novica Josifovski on why there is no equaliser in the generic music player?

Martin didn’t really have input either but as I’ve said earlier I have forwarded your feedback and made sure it’s listened to. Can’t give any promises though.

There are a lot of reviews on the web about Satio now. Reading reviews is a good way to get info about products, so i thought I’d post the links to some of the reviews out there. We have also posted an Alatest widget in the sidebar (These sidebars are close to filled up now  ). Alatest gathers reviews from a lot of different sites and more will most probably be added as we go along. Here’s a direct link to Satio at the Alatest website.

Some of the reviews listed here are most probably listed by Alatest as well but the ones here are the one that you pointed out to me so far. (let me know if I’ve missed any of your links!)

Please keep posting reviews in the comments, and I’ll make sure to update the post with them.

7 reasons why the Sony Ericsson Satio can challenge the iPhone Techradar

Sony Ericsson Satio review Techradar

Sony Ericsson Satio review Symbian-Guru

Sony Ericsson Satio Review 3G.co.uk

Sony Ericsson Satio cnet Australia

Sony Ericsson Satio review Electricpic.co.uk

Sony Ericsson Satio All About Phones (Dutch)

Sony Ericsson Satio: Mega-Kamera mit Bedienschwächen areamobile

Satio – bästa kameramobilen någonsin Prylportalen (Swedish)

Första intrycket av Sony Ericsson Satio mobil (Swedish)

Mobilerna som ska rädda Sony Ericsson DN.se (Swedish)

Sony Ericsson Satio – detailed review by Piotr

Sony Ericsson Satio review GSM Arena

Because of the great interaction with you here and the requests for tutorials and such I haven’t really had time to post any of my own pics lately so I thought it would be time for that.

Some mixed ones from the last week, some night shots and some panoramas. The panoramas are also straight out of the Satio, i.e. created with the automatic panorama mode in Satio.

Because of the Satio now becoming widely avaiable for reviewers and such there as many of you have noticed a lot of pics available on the web now.

Hope you’ll like them.

Guess what, it’s early Q4 now

One of the most asked question I’ve gotten here in the comments is more details on launch timing..  Even if many of you have gotten preliminary dates from your retailers I now at least have some information to give for the Nordic market.

Satio is on it’s way to our Nordic retailers and will be available in stores during next week. Specific date can vary between countries and retailers. In Sweden the selling will start on Friday the 16th of October.

Also to follow up on one of the most amusing comments during the life of this blog..

Mark Smith

Submitted on 2009/10/05 at 11:30pm My wife asked me when I was going to clean the garage out…i told her “early Q4″

Mark – sorry but I guess it’s time for you to clean that garage