UNBOXING AND FIRST REVIEW OF CEDAR FROM SONY ERICSSON

In My Meeting with The Sony Ericsson Team, I had requested for them to send over their Green Portfolio Phones, and in the 4 Phones they sent me, they also included the Cedar which has just been launched earlier this week. At A Price point of Rs. 6200 the Cedar is an attractive phone, with 3G Data Capabilities, a Good Quality Speaker and Screen.

The Cedar's Camera is a 2MB, with capabilities to shoot a 30fps Video in VGA Mode. The Included Web Browser is a Access Netfront™ 3.5and Sony has Built in Apps for You Tube Streaming, Some Games, An FM Radio, also something called a Widget Manager 2.0 – an application which allows users access social networking via the stand-by screen. Widget Manager can login to Facebook, Twitter and MySpace accounts. There is also a Web Based Backup of the phone book (Thumbs Up) and an EAS Push mail capability. The Screen is a 2.2" 262K colors TFT. The Phone weighs a cool 84 Grams, and feels light and nice in your hand. The claimed talk time is 12Hours 30 minutes, with a Standby time of upto 420 minutes.

I loved the keyboard, especially the ridged edges, though the missing bumps on the 5 Key, and the key layout is something that you have to get used to, the keys work well lighted in a dark room (See video at the end of the post).

The CEDAR in it's Box. If you notice the box is pretty Small. In my conversation with Anurag Kontu last week, he mentioned that Indian Consumers are not too happy with a Small box Packing, they feel that they should get a bigger box, but the smaller box is a part of the Green Heart process at Sony, to reduce packaging material. Let's go ahead and open this box up now.







The box has minimal stuff in it, and notice there is no plastic bags, a big part of going green, to reduce any waste material. Sony has also included a micro USB charger that switches to zero power usage when the phone is not plugged in, or the phone is fully charged. Also included is a small pouch that has your phone, with a Green Heart Logo, you can use this to carry the phone around, as the material quality is pretty decent. There are two small booklets with the SAR and Important Information in it. The Phone user guide is on the phone itself and is not included as a Printed Copy.

Let's Go ahead and now look at the phone.





That's the phone. The phone box contained a Black and Red combo, also available is a silver and Black Combo but I loved the red on this phone. More Pictures to follow.






Let's Power on this Baby



The 3.5 mm jack is on the top of the phone and the Micro USB is on the bottom of the phone.





Here are the Demo Videos, both in a Bright room and a dark room





I am going to now use this phone over the next 2 weeks and will report about the performance. In the first preview I love the screen and sound Quality, keeping in mind that this phone is just Rs. 6200 and has 3G HSDPA capabilities. Though the camera is only 2Megapixel (but a Quick time support means I will be able to shoot some videos and port them to my Apple Mac Easily)... Let's see how the usage comes along on this one.

I also got the Hazel, Aspen, and Elm from Sony to test out, which are all a part of their Green Portfolio. I will post pictures of these soon. The Aspen is a windows Mobile phone, while the Hazel and Elm use the same OS Cedar Uses (Sony's Proprietary OS)

So What's Happening with Sony Ericsson

Interesting Meeting over a Nice Lunch on 24/September with the Sony Ericsson Team. Anurag Kontu (Head of Marketing) and Tammy Teo (APAC PR) travelled down to Delhi to meet a few bloggers, yes and your's truly was invited. Though the purpose of the lunch was to see how Sony Ericsson and Bloggers could work together, it was nice fun meeting Clinton Jeff, Abhishek Bhatnagar, and Javed Anwar

Though all of us came out of the meeting learning more on Sony Plans to ensure that devices are available on all Operating Systems, and there is a universal approach, though as of Today there has been a statement issued by Sony Ericssons' Chief Technology Officer Jan Uddenfeldt that there will be no new Symbian Phones, this was not shared with us at the Lunch.

Anurag and I had an brilliant conversation about the Green Heart by Sony Ericsson, and over the next few days I am going to try to get Anurag to speak to me over a Chat and share his thoughts about going green, and how Sony Ericsson is making a Difference.

What was surprising to learn was that the Green Heart Phone, Hazel, is actually capturing 30% of the Market between the 6K to 12K Priced Handsets, though it is not selling because it's a Green Heart Phone, interesting conversation that is, but because of features and prices.

Anurag also shared that Sony has now standardized on the Mini USB Port as the charger port, so no more of those different charges amongst their lines. Another interesting fact shared by Anurag was that Sony Ericsson has now spent a lot of time and money on the new line of chargers, that actually power off (Zero energy consumption) after your phone has finished charging, or is not connected with the Charger, thus contributing more to their Go Green Efforts.

Though No one committed to the Sony Ericsson / Sony Tablet, but we did have a good conversation around it. Also the conversation turned around to why Phone Manufacturers charge a premium and or are priced higher than the competition and what defines phone pricing.

We came out of the meeting, make a few new friends, but without a scoop what is happening. Though we have a commitment from Sony Ericsson that they will spend more time sharing Phone Instruments for reviews, so soon you should be seeing' some stuff here.

I was pretty busy catching up with Anurag, that I did not click any pictures, but here is one that Clinton Jeff, took while I was speaking to Anurag.

From Left to Right (Anurag Kontu, Tammy Teo, Vasundhra Mudgil)



We did get to play with Anurag's own phone the Xperia X10 running Android 2.1 (Well he has an advantage working for Sony, though confirmed dates of when the Phones will come preloaded with 2.1 was still not available), Also available were X10 Mini, and the X8, which was looking pretty nice with it's gradient blue back.

Open Magazine Volume 02 Issue 02

This week in my Open Magazine Article, I look at the Newly Launched

* Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 Phone, Sony's First Attempt at the Android Phone
* The MSI Wind U160 Laptop: A Sexy Machine with Intel Pine Trail Atom Processor
* iProf: India's first e-Learning Tablet
* Adidas Senheiser Sports Earphones Your Exercise Companion


To view my article click here to download the PDF or visit the Open Magazine website for a high resolution copy of the article

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The above article appeared in the Open Magazine Issue 02, Volume 02, Dated 16th April 2010

Twin peaks - Review of the Sony Ericsson Aino and Satio

Phones these days have large screens with high resolution cameras and can double up as great multimedia devices too. But there seems to be no end in sight to the mad race for improvement. An ideal example is the latest high-end offerings from Sony Ericsson, the Satio and Aino.



The Satio is the more expensive of the two at Rs 35,950. The first thing that strikes you when you hold the phone is the 3.5” screen which is designed for a 16:9 format and is ultra bright. The 640x360 pixels make the display truly amazing. While the touch user interface did not appeal to me much, its response to touch was really good.

It features a 12.1 megapixel camera with a smile shutter, which means it will only take a picture when the subject is smiling — don’t ask me how you will click a frowning man. The camera also has touch focus and Xenon flash. It comes with Geotagging and face detection, and also has red-eye reduction, Sony’s very own Best Pic application and video blogging. The video light makes shooting videos in dimly lit areas error-free. It also supports 16x digital zoom.
The Satio runs on a Symbian OS and you can get a lot of other applications to use along with the built-in video calling, 3D games, FM radio and video streaming applications. Despite all the hardware, the Satio weighs just 126 grams. The phone, however, is available only in black and comes with a 128 MB in-built memory.

Still, the Aino, with its pristine white finish and the bundled Bluetooth stereo headset, appealed to me more. Interestingly, the phone and the headset are charged using a single docking station. Since the Bluetooth device is attached using a 3.5-mm jack, you can just pull it out and plug in your favourite headphones if you like it that way. The stereo sound and the clear bass made the sound quality really impressive.
But what appealed to me more than the Rs 28,950 price tag was the slide-up keyboard. The 3” screen seemed tiny in front of the Satio, but Sony claims it is scratchproof — I could not test this.



The Aino also has built-in Wi-Fi that allows it to synchronise media with Play Station 3 or a PC. The Aino also gives you remote play access to videos, television shows and photos at the press of a button.
And to top it all, it features an 8 megapixel camera with 16x digital zoom. The Aino, too, features face detection, geotagging as well as the send-to-web feature, which you can use over 3G or Wi-Fi.

But the Aino, at 134 gram, weighs more than its costlier cousin. The phone has an in-bulit memory of 55MB and comes with an 8 GB Micro SD Card included with the phone. Thankfully, Sony has finally given up its proprietary memory stick pro to switch over to Micro SD. While the phone has a GSM talktime of roughly 13 hours, the battery can last up to 36 hours if it is used purely to play music. Standard features such as Video calling (3G only), Exchange Active Sync, Instant Messaging, Auto rotate, FM radio with RDS and YouTube make this phone a real show-stopper.

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The above review appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday, 15th November 2009