Sony Ericsson Satio Review
February 1, 2010 | Posted by SearchMobile The Sony Ericsson Satio has had a lot of hype to live up to. Sony Ericsson have been accused of lagging behind in terms of touchscreens, with the Satio touted as their big response. And the Satio doesn’t disappoint… in some ways. If you like your mobile phone simple and uncomplicated, then the Satio may not be for you. But if you can handle a phone that is a little high maintenance and requires initial patience, then you could find yourself handsomely rewarded by the Satio, which in some ways is one of the best touchscreen camera phones available.
In terms of looks, the Satio is well designed. It’s a little less slick compared to some other touchscreens, and a little heavier, weighing in at 126g and boasting dimensions of 111 x 54 x 15 mm. But looks can be deceiving, and whilst other phones are more attractive, the Satio is full of hidden depths. It has a great 3.5 inch 16 million Colour Touch Screen, with an incredible resolution of 640 x 360 Pixels. In terms of resolution and viewing quality, you are going to be hard pushed to find a phone that betters the Satio.
Which is no surprise when you consider the imaging capabilities, namely an incredible 12.1 Megapixels camera. Complete with Xenon flash, digital zoom, auto focus, geo tagging functions on pictures, smile and face detection function, picture album and slide shows as well as your standard editing features, the Satio really is pushing the envelope as a credible combination of phone and digital camera. And in terms of video, the Satio similarly trounces its competitors, with video streaming, video recording, 3G video calling – and all complete with video flash.
There are your standard media playing features as well, with a player supporting MP3, AAC and MPEG4, giving you album art display, playlists and also FM Radio with an RDS function. The memory storage supplied is limited to just 128MB, but this is expandable to 16Gb with a microSD card. Battery time is also quite good on the surface, with 11 hours of talk time and 360 hours of standby.
But perhaps its the Symbian operating system that lets it down a little, which is notorious for being powerful but clunky. However, the Satio recently had a software update to rectify some of the initial teething problems, which included a tendency for the Satio to crash unexpectedly, a slightly odd setup and sometimes unresponsive interface, which can often mean taking the long road when it comes to navigation.
However, we want to give the Satio the benefit of the doubt, and once you are comfortable with it, there are many plus points to mark this out as a phone to fall in love with. Connectivity wise, you are looking at 3G HDSPA, Bluetooth, USB, Wi-Fi (again, this can initially be a little inconvenient to set up, but once in place, works fantastically well) and also the ability to synchronise the Satio with your PC. Email is supported, although not with Windows Live. There is however GPRS and Google Maps, so you can rely on the Satio to work out where you are, and with quad band, this can be in any country in the world.
In some respects the Satio is a little difficult. But we think once you get the hang of it, it is much more rewarding than some of the more accessible touchscreens about. We reckon the Satio will often split opinion, but those that are willing to invest a little time getting to know its quirks will ultimately find themselves with a phone that really is unlike any other.
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