Sony Ericsson Satio is a new 12 megapixel cameraphone running Symbian S60 and offering plenty of features for those of you who use their phones not only for talking and texting.
Sony Ericsson Satio pros:
+ 3.5″ 16M touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
+ 12 megapixel state-of-the-art autofocus camera
+ LED and xenon flash, active lens cover
+ VGA@30fps video recording
+ Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI,
+ Quad-band GSM support
+ 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
+ HSUPA 3.6 Mbps support
+ Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS
+ microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
+ TV out
Sony Ericsson Satio cons:
- No 3.5mm audio jack or a standard USB port
- No DivX or XviD support out-of-the-box
- No smart or voice dialing
- No office document editing
- No stereo speakers
The design:
Sony Ericsson Satio measures 112 x 55 x 13.3 mm and weighs 126 grams. The cell phone is available in three different colors so you can get the right one for you. The front of the cell phone features the 3.5-inch touchscreen showing up to 16M colors in 640×360 resolution. Below the screen are three hard buttons and a proximity senors for screen auto turn off when you put it close to your face. The left side of the Sony Ericsson Satio features the screen lock slider, connectivity pot and a microSD memory card slot. The right side of the phone has plenty of controls. Those include volume rocker, shutter key, a button for camera modes, and one for entering the gallery. The top of the cell phone houses the power button and the loudspeaker, whereas the bottom houses only the lanyard eyelet. The back of the Sony Ericsson Satio features the camera lens along with xenon and a LED flash hidden under a protective cover.
Performance:
The signal reception and in call sound quality are no problem with this phone. The Sony Ericsson Satio’s screen has excellent image quality and direct sunlight legibility. The screen itself is responsive enough so it is comfortable to use. The interface in the Sony Ericsson Satio is a slightly tweaked Cymbal so it is very straightforward and intuitive. You get a few tabs, full customization, shortcuts and large, user-friendly icons.
The phonebook has unlimited capacity and you can add images videos, ringtones and multiple information to each contact. You can also group contacts and search contacts by gradual typing.
Messaging is a pleasure with the Sony Ericsson Satio as it has a few different text input methods including virtual QWERTY keyboard. There is also a mini QWERTY keyboard if you like using a stylus. The handwriting recognition works quite nice too.
Multimedia:
The photo gallery in the Sony Ericsson Satio is just great. It not only works amazingly fast, but also allows customization. With tags you can access you photos quickly and the built-in accelerometer takes care of the screen auto rotation.
The music player supports plenty of file types and has very good audio quality. You can view the album artwork, and browse the music library in a few different ways. Unfortunately, the phone has no standard 3.5 audio jack.
The video player has somewhat limited functionality as it does not support DivX/XviD videos, but still it works well.
The 12 megapixel digital camera in the Sony Ericsson Satio is capable of shooting 4000 x 3000 photos. The camera interface is easy to use, the functions are abundant, the auto mode works fine – the camera is simply the best in its class. The image quality is amazing. The colors are reproduced very accurately and they are well saturated. There is little noise and the images are sharp. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Sony Ericsson Satio performs better than some dedicated digital cameras (such as the Kodak EasyShare Z950, for instance).
The Sony Ericsson Satio records VGA videos at 30 fps which is a great achievement for a cell phone. The quality of videos is more than good and it is suitable for youtube.
The web browser in Sony Ericsson Satio works fined. It displays websites as it should and it has full flash support, however, the sites with flash might be too demanding for the phone and drain the battery and RAM quickly.
Selected Sony Ericsson Satio features and specifications:
- Camera
12.1 megapixel camera
Up to 12x digital zoom
Auto focus
BestPicâ„¢
Face detection
Geo tagging of photos
Image stabilizer
Photo feeds
Photo fix
Send to web
Red-eye reduction
Smile detection
Touch focus
Video light
Video recording
Xenon flash
- Music
Album art
Bluetoothâ„¢ stereo (A2DP)
Media player
Music tones (MP3/AAC)
PlayNowâ„¢
TrackIDâ„¢
- Web
WebKit web browser
Bookmarks
Web feeds
- Connectivity
Bluetoothâ„¢ technology
Modem
PictBridge
Synchronisation
TV out
USB mass storage
USB support
In-built WiFiâ„¢
Other recently reviewed cell phones:
LG GW520, HTC Magic, LG GD900 Crystal, Nokia 3720 classic, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, Sony Ericsson C901, Nokia 6600i slide, Acer beTouch E200, HTC Touch2, Nokia 6760 slide
