Category Archives: test pilots

As announced a while ago there is a consumer research program around X10 in the works. The research program is a bigger thing but we here at the blog got the opportunity to recruit some of the research candidates. Many of you applied and some of you got chosen. Now it’s live. This wednesday I got to join Sumit in one of the start up interviews and getting started moments here in Stockholm. Me and Sumit visited Peter, who also runs a blog at www.DailyAndroid.se, asked a lot of questions and finally got to the part where he was to unbox his X10 and get started with settings, services and applications. The first meeting is of course around background and the initial thoughts of getting the X10 in his hands but there will be further follow up posts over time.

I’m sure that Sumit will get back here with more of Peters feedback soon but I just thought I would highlight that it is ongoing and post some pics I shot with Vivaz during our visit.

Another thing to highlight is of course also the fact that XPERIA X10 is now about to hit the stores. Availability is different in different countries but e.g. here in Sweden it will be in stores just in time for Easter, i.e. 31st of March.

This post was originally a comment to the post calling for candidates, but I felt it needed its own post as well.

Hi all,

Great response and again sorry for the limitations. Thanks all for taking the time to apply. This is not the same context as for Satio, which was a test pilot programme to allow you to try the phone and blog about your hands on. Ambition is to do larger scale going forward. The original plan was to run conventional research programme only, exploring “average” user behaviour and knowledge. I incorporated you as an addition with the condition that I manage it on my own and that is why there are restrictions as per my physical presence. What I will do is to contact my team in local markets and ask if they can contact you for test pilot programmes in your country. I can´t tell the outcome, but is worth a shot from my side to try.

@Rzay Rza, North Cape. Sounds awesome. The research is aiming to be used for longer term evolution, no impact for launch. My ambition is of course to pick up key things from you and drive that to implementation as soon as possible. Maybe since products gets updates, also within a products life cycle. I want to listen to start with and we take it from there. This is a pilot.
@Freddy. Nice blog. I used to be quite good at Spanish, but hasn´t used it for a long time. Think I will read your blog to brush it up again and Bogata is such a nice city.
@Noc and Manish, same goes for you. Maybe a local programme.
@Brad, thanks for the invite. I was in Sidney and Melbourne last summer. Loved it. Will send a note to MU Australia and to others as per above…
@Pierce, China is indeed interesting. If you don´t mind me asking, could you make a post about what is top of mind with regards to consumer insights on smart phone usage in China? You chose what to write. Really interested and we take it from there.

Impressed by the flexibility offered, and there are so many of you that I could opt for. The selected candidates that fulfil the research programme criteria in terms of agreed engagement will be able to keep their units after the research. However, with a device like X10 it is recommended that you are on a data plan which is something that I should have informed about from the very beginning. So hope that will work with the candidates that I announce below as I didn´t specify that for the application. Looking forward to working with you. The conventional research programme is closed for feedback to the public domain, but here you will be able to follow the participants reports for sure.

Cheers,
S.

Ps. I see that colors are still discussed due to unclear information from our side. The Xperia X10, X10 mini, X10 mini pro all support 16M colors, hardware wise. Software wise there are limitations from the OS and what the future upgrades will imply on leveraging screen capability is not visible to me at this point. We will let you know as soon I have something to share.

The selected research candidates:

Peter Löfström
Hi,
First of the facts:
Age 27
Location central stockholm Sweden
Work Part-time at Car Phone Ware House / The Phone House, Study economics, and full time blogger: Daily iPhone, Daily Android & Daily Mobile
Bloggs:
DailyiPhone.se : My own
DailyAndroid.se : My own, at rest right now(waiting for more models and Google PR)
DailyMobile.se : My partners, help out whit stories, test and reviews.
I have been working whit phones for 6 year, i know them by heart. I place a lot of hope in this series from Sony Ericsson.
Regards
//Peter

Matt Davis
Name: Matt Davis
Location: London
Occupation: Owner and chief editor
Blog: http://www.tracyandmatt.co.uk
Short motivation: Beta tester, blogger and reviewer for more than 5 years. With android since the beginning.

Tej Randhawa
Age: 32
Location: London, UK
Occupation: Analyst
Blogs: http://www.xperiax10.net/
http://www.htcheroblog.com/
http://www.samsungomniahd.com/
Motivation: Passionate about smartphones. Experienced blogger/reviewer using Twitter & YouTube to connect with readership. Android familiarity and dedicated Xperia X10 blog.

Andreas L
Age: 34
Location: Stockholm
Occupation: Student (Bachelor in game development), Stockholm University
Blog or equivalent if applicable: NA
I have a great sense of understanding how people will experience, interact and feel about an artefact and have been working with user experience/usability since 2000.
I’m currently working on a Bachelor’s thesis (text input on mobile devices) and my focus is HCI/Android and AR applications.
Oh, I’m really great and super awesome.

Linda Bjuväng
Age: 22
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Occupation: Bachelor Programme in Social Work Focusing Disability and Aging
Blog or equivalent if applicable: I have a blog, I use facebook and youtube daily.
I have always been using Sony Ericsson and right now i have a Jalou and i love it. I am a very social person and i can promote the phone to a lot of people in a fun and affective way. And i am just crazy about new technology!

Emil Jönsson
February 21, 2010 at 9:02 am (Edit)
Complete name: Emil Jönsson
Age: 32
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Occupation: Student in interaction design, last semester of bachelor degree
Blog or equivalent if applicable: wordpress
motivation: I am using several internet and mobile services and like to test new technology. I have just started to use the android platform and I am familiar with beta testing. I think I would be a great asset to you.

Hi all,

Spent the week in Barcelona for MWC and you probably have followed the reporting. Massive interest in Xperia X10 and overwhelming positive introduction of X10 mini and X10 mini pro, which I can´t help to reiterate.

Back to X10.

One Sony Ericsson research programme that is about to start relates to user experience. From the very first moment of opening up the box, the first period of getting started and views after a weeks usage. This in order to learn from user behaviour and get valuable feedback as input for future releases.

We will run a conventional research programme by recruiting users through our agencies. In addition, I am very happy to announce that we will for the very first time allow recruitment among yourself as I believe you are such a great representation of knowledge and passion. We will be looking for 2-4 persons that are interested to use the device and are committed to give constructive feedback.

However I am at the same time sorry to say that there are some limitations about this recruitment. It will require a face to face meeting and since I am driving this as an additional pilot, we can only cope with Sweden (Stockholm and south Sweden) and UK, greater London area. I am really sorry for that as there as so many of you that I would like to give this opportunity to as you are great contributors to this forum. Your interest about the device is evident from your activeness on the blog to date, which will of course be considered but at the same time I would like to see who else might be interested.

This is a pilot and going further, we might be able to do this in somewhat greater scale for the upcoming products based on interest etc.

The candidate will be needed to answer questions/send a report on the usage a couple of times over course of months time and be willing to meet face to face for a deep interview, either at our premises or even at their resident.

If, you are interested please post a short introduction of yourself in the comments section below, please include the following:

- Complete name

- Age

- Location

- Occupation

- Blog or equivalent if applicable

- Short motivation why you would be a suitable candidate in less than twenty words

I would appreciate If I could close the application process by Tuesday next week.

Have a great weekend

Sumit

So our test pilots have been up and running for quite a while now and we have all got to see their pics and videos shot with Satio and read about their experiences on their blogs and in their comments here. They have experienced some issues with their phones, as expected from pre-release SW of course but seems to have coped with it in general and liked their experience. A while ago I sent them some questions to sum up their experience, here’s what they answered:

Caroline:

What are your thoughts on the social media features and possibilities in the Satio?

The Satio is a great piece of kit to get involved in social media. Of course there is the internet browser which can be used for all the standard sites (and with full page versions as well) this is great to use …

I have been looking for a decent twitter app for the phone (as I find the web one a little lacking) and have been recommended one (Gravity) which I will try and report back)

The phone also comes with some great little direct update apps – to Flickr and Youtube included which makes it easy to do those spontaneous updates if you are out and about. This phone will be invaluable for on-the-spot reporting and tweeting from events … especially as the keyboard is so intuitive and the video and camera so good.

What 3rd party software have you installed?

I have not explored 3rd party apps much as (to be honest) I wasn’t sure which ones to install (in terms of phone type – the downside of test piloting a new phone I guess .. none of the sites are geared up for it yet )

I will be looking out for a Twitter app tho … and other apps to help me interact with various social media websites … It already has Google Maps (an app I added on my last phone) so no need to do that … and with the built in uploading to FLickr and Youtube that is sorted too …

How do you use the five start panels?

I must confess I have only just stated using the Favourites panels …so now I have a few names in there of the people I call the most (although could there be a way to search for people to add to favourites instead of having to scroll down to find them?) .. whilst in the Link favouites I have twitter, facebook, my wordpress account and myspace (although I don’t use this screen very often as I browse from one to another once I am inside the browser itself). My phone is on the middle option (the desktop image) the most.

The other tab I use the most is the media one – it is a great way to quickly get to the images quickly … great for showing people that hilarious image etc

I don’t really use the fifth button (recently used I’m guessing?) …. but Ill start remembering its there now

What surprised you the most with the Satio?

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy to use the full screen qwerty keyboard was (this was the one thing that almost put me off the Satio when I saw it online). It is much more reactive than I imagined and is very forgiving of misplaced fingers.

I was also pleased with the colours of the screen – yes it looked impressive on the adverts and photos, but it really is a stunning OS

The camera is phenomenal – better than I could have imagined – the colours are vivid and the image is bright … excellent

I was also surprised with the weight of the phone -I expected it to be a lot heavier that it was .. I knew it was a fairly sized handset but it is surrisingly light (which is good :-0)

Making calls on the it is great too – and I was pleased with the sound quality (living in a noisy city you can’t often hear the person you are talking too if outside) but this is crystal clear.

All in all = lots of pleasant surprises – generally at how the phone has exceeded expectations in terms of quality

Sandeep:

What are your thoughts on the social media features and possibilities in the Satio?

I’m quite happy with roadsync and the way it pushes my office mail. I do wish that it supported multiple email accounts though as I wanted to sync my Gmail account through it too.
The Facebook link is quite optimized for touch use and has nice transitions when you move from section to section, but I do miss a push-oriented desktop widget like on the A200 phones or the Facebook panel on the X1. Hopefully, something on these lines would be up on PlayNow Arena when the Satio is out on retail channels. Speaking of PlayNow, I hope to see tonnes of apps, media etc. available for the Satio on the portal so that future customers can expand the functionality of their phone without going through a dozen forums.

The facility to upload pictures directly to an image hosting service is quite nice too and I can see a lot of people using it. Now if only Picasa would improve their JPEG compression algorithm!

What 3rd party software have you installed?

As of now, I have the following:

Opera mini – Nice interface and fast, but makes too many javascript errors.
Gmail app – useless on touchscreen phones. looks like it was designed for normal phones
Fring – Tremendously useful, can connect to multiple IM accounts, Facebook etc. simultaniously. Yet to test out its VOIP functionality though.
Symabook – A free Facebook client that I installed to test it out. The interface looks neat, but it’s still in development, so lacks a lot of functionality.

I tried to look for an Antivirus for the Satio, but no one has a version ready for it yet.

How do you use the five start panels?

The favorite contacts panel is very useful for me as I call/text or mail pretty much the same set of people all the time. I have a Wikipedia link on the bookmarks panel which i use a lot for finding useless info on random stuff, haha. The facebook link gets used a lot too. The main panel of course, is the most important one. The music widget is extremely useful and I use my own wallpapers here all the time. The photo panel is used a lot as I constantly review the pictures I took and decide which ones to post/ process. The flick scrolling action here is extremely smooth, even though i have a few hundred pictures in the phone by now. The apps panel gets used whenever I need to switch on Bluetooth and use the WiFi wizard, calendar or calculator (several times a day).

What surprised you the most with the Satio?

That the red (Bordeaux) looks a lot nicer in the newer videos than I expected it to be, haha. With my Satio though, the thing that surprised me the most was the solid feel that the handset posessed. It’s not as heavy as an X1, but it’s very sturdy and the panel gaps are millimeter perfect. Certainly a well built handset and Kudos to SE for that.

One thing that has been special with most of the pictures that have been in my sample galleries is that they have been straight out of the Satio, i.e. totally unprocessed. This of course to give you a good idea of what Satio is capable of – what it gives you to work with. However today the majority of pictures we see during a day has had at least some and in most cases a lot (e.g. advertising) of post processing done to them.

I would expect most of the pictures seen on services like Flickr, Picasa and others to at least have some kind of post processing applied. Therefore I’m glad to see that Sandeep has started to post some post processed pictures for us to look at.

Don’t get me wrong here, the pictures from Satio are of course usable without post processing but just as with pictures from any other camera (phone, P&S or SLR) the photographer gets another level of control by tweaking things afterwards. The endless possibilities in post processing is really one of the revolutions that digital photography has brought us!

Think about it, just a decade or two ago you had to be some kind of dark room chemistry expert do these things. Today anyone can do it with huge amounts of free and easy to use software available.

Here’s two of his processed pictures that I really think has that wow factor!

As usual you find all of his work on his blog and in his picasa album.