Sony fights back: Satio smartphone 'more powerful' than iPhone...

Jonny Evans
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November 27, 2009
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Sony may have come up with a pretty good gaming smartphone of its own, in the form of the new Satio smartphone - which at least one games developer says “is more powerful” than the iPhone.

"The Satio features the same 3D-Chip PowerVR SGX  as the iPhone 3GS running Symbian on an even more powerful CPU ARM11 clocked at 600MHz," wrote Fishlabs boss Michael Schade, as reported by Mobile Entertainment.

"Furthermore, it comes with plenty of memory and with a bigger display than the iPhone featuring 640 x 360 pixels resolution."

The report suggests Sony may have been quietly working to take on Apple in the smartphone space, making the Satio’s functionality open to developers, and offering a higher resolution screen. Fishlabs has ported iPhone game Rally Master Pro to the new Sony gadget.

The feature-list isn’t bad: the 3G device uses a MicroSD slot for removeable memory,  has an accelerometer, a touchscreen, WiFI, Bluetooth and a 12-megapixel camera.

However, despite the hype, Sony’s Symbian-based fightback faces some problems - not least that several UK retailers are unprepared to sell it due to “unspecified” software issues.

What is clear though is that as Apple’s iPhone grabs an ever-expanding slice of the mobile games market, Sony, fighting to protect its investments in mobile gaming in the form of the PSP, and moving to stem its declining share of the smartphone market, will apply itself to carving out its own slice of the industry.

That Apple CEO Steve Jobs has respect for Sony is a matter for public record. In the past he has taken time during his keynote presentations to praise Sony’s consumer electronics success.

Comments (16)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 27, 2009 - 8:04am

Yeah but how usable is it?  iPhone is successful because of its power, it's successful because it just works!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 27, 2009 - 9:18am

And Satio just doesn't apparently!

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8377312.stm

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 27, 2009 - 8:29am

"Powerful with Symbian" is an oxymoron.

Riley (not verified) | November 27, 2009 - 12:23pm

Sorry I lost complete interest and stopped reading at the word "Symbian"

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 27, 2009 - 12:23pm

Good luck getting game programmers for Symbian. Everyone is moving to the iPhone and Android.

 

Symbian & Windows Mobile are pretty dead.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 27, 2009 - 12:40pm

Bigger display and faster processor means a better phone ? Compare iPhone OS and Symbian if you have brains. Good luck selling it fucktards !

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 27, 2009 - 4:52pm

So, it's hmm... about half the speed of the 3GS?

tim Rowledge (not verified) | November 27, 2009 - 5:24pm

iPhone 3GS uses an ARM Cortex A8 based cpu. This is significantly faster then the now fairly old ARM11 cpu series, even at the same clock speed. It's basically a dual core cpu.

See http://it.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3579 for an article explaining this reasonably well.

 

However, it's pretty irrelevant since the spec list for the Sony Satio here - http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_satio_%28idou%29-2683.php - shows the cpu as an ARM Cortex A8 with PowerVR SGX; exactly the same as the iPhone 3GS. So the guy claiming the Satio would be faster than the iPhone 3GS is doubly wrong.

Nobody new (not verified) | November 28, 2009 - 2:23pm

It's worse than that; a higher resolution screen = more pixels to plot. The same GPU having to plot more pixels to complete a frame = lower perceived performance. Just like how you can try running a game at a lower resolution if it's giving your GPU too much of a workout on an ordinary computer.

People should ask themselves this: to what extent do they think the iPhone would benefit from more pixels and to what extent do they think more pixels is just an attempt to win over the usual gadgety OCD types who think purely in numbers?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 27, 2009 - 11:48pm

i mean.. according to moore's law the satio, made about 5.5 months after the iPhone 3GS, should be about 133% of the speed of the iPhone 3GS...

so.. this wouldn't actually be surprising

if it were true anyway

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 28, 2009 - 7:38am

Ya, but it's a Sony so it a no-go out the gate! POS!

KRR

Violian (not verified) | November 28, 2009 - 12:29pm

Doesn't matter if it's more powerful. Devleopers look at the platform as a whole. The Pre has been out for a while now, and according to spec sheets, it's more powerful than the iPhone. I've had the Pre since day-one, and the best app for it is Craigslist....lol.  Phone manufacturers have to look at Apple's story and see what they did to attract so many devleopers.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | November 28, 2009 - 12:48pm

The fact is that the Satio is an awfull rubbish unstable gandset.

autism (not verified) | November 28, 2009 - 10:46pm

Oh my ...strange guys, it´s really interesting article, i guess those guys might be envious for some reason, keep going guys !

Jeremiah (not verified) | November 29, 2009 - 11:36am

Actually, who cares?

 

I don't KNOW what CPU is in my iPhone, it is not interesting at all.

I don't give a shit about it.

 

SE is just saying that they STILL don't get it...

"Buy OUR phone, we have a touch screen, some animations and at least five applications...

It is technically superior, with a much faster CPU.. bl abla bla bla"

 

I live in the LAND of Sony Ericsson (Sweden) and more and more people are buying iPhones.

SE is for old people, those who still starts their phonecalls with "Guess where I'm calling from....?"

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | December 17, 2009 - 2:04pm

I can assure u all: Satio works fine, especially after the recent firmware update Fast and stabile, touch screen very responsive. So who needs a Mac-device any more?