The BlackBerry Storm2 9550 offer reliable performance, touch-screen technology that brings new on-screen capabilities, and more connectivity options both domestically and abroad. The Storm2 9550 is also the first device RIM has included with the BlackBerry OS 5, which includes a number of enhancements.

Research In Motion’s new BlackBerry Storm2 9550 smartphone is born of lessons learned, both good and bad.

Gone are the balky, unresponsive touch screen and slowly performance that were the hallmarks of the device’s precursor. Instead, the Storm2 9550 provides dependable performance, touch-screen technology that brings new on-screen capabilities, and more connectivity options both domestically and abroad.
The BlackBerry Storm2 9550 (I’ll just call it the Storm2 from here on out) is available now intenationaly.

The Storm2 measures in at 4.43 by 2.45 by 0.55 inches, and weighs 5.64 ounces--a slight, 0.14-ounce increase over the first iteration of the Storm (the Blackberry Storm 9530).
Like its precursor, the Storm2 comes with a 3.25-inch touch screen with 480-by-360-pixel resolution. Unlike its precursor, however, the Storm2 ditches the mechanical subsystem used to provide a clickable touch screen, using instead an all-electrical iteration of the SurePress screen. According to BlackBerry representatives, the Storm2 display “is mounted on four actuators that generate an impulse when the screen is pressed.”

Using the new SurePress screen is a little weird but oddly effective, as it seems to combine the attributes of both a resistive and a capacitive touch screen in the same device.

The pressure-based touch differences have allowed RIM to introduce its own gesture language to Storm2 users. A single light tap highlights a link or dialog box; a light double tap triggers a zoom action; and users can flick the screen in any direction--left and right to move around—as in a photo gallery or the pages of a presentation.

But most welcome is the up and down flick, along with a new feature in BlackBerry OS 5.0 that allows for inertial scrolling. This action lets users more easily scroll along in very long Websites or documents, thereby alleviating one of the biggest annoyances I’ve had with BlackBerry devices since they standardized on the trackball in the majority of the device fleet.

This new screen technology promises multitouch capabilities, as well as faster and more accurate typing than was possible with the Storm 9530. In my tests, I found the multitouch capabilities a little underwhelming, due to some limitations with the sensor approach RIM has taken.

For example, say I wanted to capitalize two letters in a row. This would require me to hold down the Shift key for a few beats as I typed the letters. If one of the letters was too close to the Shift key (X seemed to be a particular problem for me), I found the Storm2 would only occasionally recognize that I was trying to hit that key. In the end, triggering the Shift Lock instead was a less frustrating means to the same end.

As with every other on-screen keyboard implementation, users’ mileage will likely vary when it comes to typing speed and accuracy. In my short time with the device, I did not find my typing particularly fast or accurate, although I’ve been improving gradually.

However, I was grateful to see that various keyboard options are now available to the user. For example, when in landscape viewing mode (the accelerometer recognizes the shift in orientation to switch the screen, as the iPhone does), the on-screen keyboard is QWERTY. In portrait mode, the device defaults to a SureType keypad (organized like the keyboard on a BlackBerry Pearl), but the user can easily change it to QWERTY here, as well.

Naite candybar phone is reasonably priced 3G device that is a part of the company’s new GreenHeart allegiance. The phone has basic e-mail and texting ability and even has support for video phone calls. The Naite, pronounced “nigh-tee,” sports a 2 megapixel camera with photo uploading capability, and also comes with many of Sony Ericsson’s advanced media player features. Users can surf the web with and take calls on a hands-free Bluetooth headset, too.

These GreenHeart products do away with hazardous chemicals in production, reduce paper consumption and use smaller packaging. They also come with 5 star energy efficient chargers.
The Naite includes an Ecomate application, which helps its users make greener choices, as well as a Carbon Footprint calculator to see how much CO2 is being used each day. There will be a big campaign for the Sony Ericsson Naite in Latin America, Asia and Europe in the third quarter, as the company anticipates it will become one of its top sellers. It is expected to go on sale in Q3 of 2009.

The company also announced the C901 GreenHeart and the Naite.
Both the Naite and the C901 GreenHeart have lots of eco-friendly features like recycled plastic components, waterborne paint and eco-friendly packaging, the EP900 GreenHeart charger and the MH300 GreenHeart headset.

When it comes to the actual phone features, the C901 comes with a 2.2-inch QVGA display, a 5 megapixel camera with xenon flash, 900/2100MHz HSPA connectivity and microSD support. The Naite comes with quad-band EDGE device, 2100MHz HSPA connectivity, a 2 megapixel camera, a 2.2-inch QVGA display and 100MB of internal memory.

We have no idea about pricing yet but we should get more details soon as the C901 sometime in Q2 while the Naite is coming in Q3.

Five reasons to choose the Sony Ericsson Satio

1. It’s the most excellent camera phone on the market by far. 12.1 megapixels, autofocus, face detection, image stabilization and tonnes more makes the quality of its pictures superior than many dedicated digital cameras.
2. Great list of features, including GPS, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, and video recording/streaming
3. Amazing 3.5″ touchscreen with 16 million colours
4. Excelent Web browsing experience, plus built-in Facebook and YouTube applications.
5. Google maps with turn by turn navigation included.

Overview of the Sony Ericsson Satio

The Sony Ericsson Satio is a fantastic combination of camera and phone. On the front, it’s completely a touchscreen phone, while on the back, it’s completely a camera. Inside, it’s both, completely mixed with the right combination of outstanding picture taking features and mobile phone options.I’ll talk about the picture-taking abilities of the Satio in a minute. For the moment, just believe that you can’t find a superior camera phone on the market today, so if it’s a superiority camera phone you want, stop reading now and go purchase the Satio!

Before that, though, I’ll talk first about the Satio’s other features; satio mobile phone features, connectivity options, Web browsing, GPS, media player, 3D games, video streaming , and pretty much every other option that Sony Ericsson could throw at this beast!

The Satio’s screen

The Satio provide with a 3.5″ touschreen with a 16:9 widescreen display. Capable of displaying over 16 million colours at a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels, the screen is wonderful, which is pretty much what you’d hope for with a phone designed to take great pictures.

The only weakness of the Satio’s screen is that the touchscreen is based on resistive technology rather than capacitive, like the iPhone and Android. This means that you require a fingernail or stylus (supplied) to use the touchscreen effectively. You can’t just slide your finger on the screen and expect things to work like on the iPhone.

The body of the Satio

The Satio comes in a candybar form factor with no keypad. The only physcial buttons are the call accept, cancel and a menu button. Every other feature is accessed via the touchscreen. From the front, the Satio looks like any other touchscreen phone. But from the back, however, is a different story, as it’s here that the Satio’s real power in fact lies – it’s huge 12.1 megapixel camera!

There’s a wonderful and enormous slide out lens-cover on the Satio which adds to the sense of quality. Above it is the xenon flash – the top in the business, no less!

The Satio dimension is 112mm x 55mm x 13.3 mm, and weighing in at 126 grams, it’s not closely a slimline gadget! However, you can’t expect a flagship phone to be super-slim, and it’s certainly no bigger than its main competitors (Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, for example).

The Satio’s main features

Inside, Sony Ericsson have provided the Satio with a giant array of features. As well as the camera-specific features, which we’ll come to in a minute, the Satio as well contains the following:
* 12.1 megapixel camera with auto-focus, xenon flash and geo-tagging
* A-GPS
* Google Maps
* Turn by turn navigation
* Media player
* Web-kit Web browser (the same one used on Nokia smartphones, Android phones and the iPhone)
* Virtual QWERTY keyboard
* Landscape and portrait mode with automatic switching between the two according to the phone’s orientation
* HD and 3D games
* Facebook application
* Video streaming and viewing
* YouTube
* Wi-Fi
* HSDPA
* Quad-band GSM
* TV-Out and USB

This is pretty well everything we’d expect from a feature phone these days, and is another of the best qualities of the Satio – it has a best camera and it doesn’t compromise on features. Better still, because it’s Sony Ericsson, all the features work just as they should, with best quality results across the board.

There is, however, one exclusions – the Satio has a proprietary headphone jack, rather than a standard 3.5mm jack used by virtually every other manufacturer on the marketplace.

The Sony Ericsson Satio’s camera

Sony Ericsson have done all they could to make the Satio the top camera on the market. To do this, they’ve added the following features:

* 12.1 megapixel camera
* Xenon flash (the best type for camera phones)
* Dual LED flash (for recording video)
* Up to 12x digital zoom
* Auto focus
* BestPic
* Face detection
* Geo tagging of photos
* Image stabilizer
* Photo feeds
* Photo fix
* Send to web
* Red-eye reduction
* Smile detection
* Touch focus
* Video recording

That doesn’t tell the whole story though. What you find with the Satio is an experience much closer to that of a digital camera than you’d expect with a mobile phone.

Take, for example, focusing. Not only does the Satio come with auto-focus (which you’d expect), it also has face detection, which locks onto a face and focuses automatically on it without you having to do anything. Switch on smile detection, and the Satio won’t take a picture until it detects a smile.

There’s an image stabilizer which decrease vibration, automatic geo tagging of your pictures, red eye reduction and touch focus, which is my special favourite. This lets you adjust the focus of the camera by touch. You simply line up your shot so the the picture is shown on the screen, then touch the screen where you want the camera to focus. It makes taking best quality pictures a snap, and shows just how good touchscreens work with cameras.

Summary

In conclusion, the Sony Ericsson Satio sees Sony Ericsson going back to its roots and producing a camera phone of excellent performance. The company has been suffering lately with bad results and bad phones, but the Satio sees it back to best form again. My only consideration is the user interface, which is seeming rather old now, and my only displeasure is the lack of 3.5mm headphone jack.

Those gripes aside, the spectacular camera performance combined with the excellent list of features makes the Satio the most excellent camera phone in the world today – if you need a good camera phone, you really can’t do better than the Satio.