Sony Ericsson Satio review

Sony Ericsson Satio smartphone, launched earlier in India, claimed to offer superb multimedia experience to its users. The device features a 12.1 megapixel camera with Xenon flash on its razor-sharp 3.5 (8.9 cm), 16:9 ratio screen. But does it live up to the hype?

In short, if you're expecting an awesome camera phone, you won't be disappointed. If you're looking for a brilliant audio and video experience, it can hold its own against the best media phones out there. But if you're after both those things and a phone that works simply without crashing, you might be out of luck.

On first inspection, this is a premium looking handset with an air of class. The Satio feels quite weighty but reassuringly solid at the same time. Interestingly, it’s actually only 126g, meaning the heaviness is just an optical illusion perhaps helped by the quality of the materials used. It features minimalist buttons at the bottom of its luxuriously large widescreen, which add to the handset's sleekness.

The YouTube compatible device comes with Face detection technology. Sony Ericsson Satio runs Symbian OS and offers find the way - aGPS, PlayNow arena movies and Media Go to provide drag, drop and enjoy features.

There's a screen lock and microSD slot, plus proprietary headphone jack/AV output to one side and camera shutter, camera/video switch, play button and zoom/volume buttons to the other side. All these functions are set against smooth sliver finishing, showcasing the black on the rest of the handset. 

The camera also looks classy, with a sizeable, but not overbearing, sliding lens cover. It boasts face and smile detection, 12x digital zoom, touch focus and a Xenon flash. The resultant quality is superb, in a range of conditions. Sharing images once you've taken them is also a breeze (provided you can get connected to the web).

Sony Ericsson Satio looks like a decent point and shoot camera let alone a phone. Unfortunately, that's where we think the Satio falls down. It's an excellent camera phone and does well when it comes to calling people, with clear call quality even on speakerphone, but all the stuff in between is not without issues.

The OS (based on Symbian S60 v5) appeared quite buggy (this may just be a problem with early production models but happened enough to prove seriously irksome), crashing frequently during our review period.

This was particularly evident when we tried to flip from portrait to landscape mode. Often, it wasn't a full-blown crash, just a weird flicker like someone had forgotten to put 50 pence in the electricity meter. After a second or so, we were back up and running again. Until the next time.

This is a massive shame as the homescreen icons are big, colourful and inviting and the monochrome sub menu actually more appealing once you’ve drilled down to that level. The user interface is also pretty poor, with you having to tap more than once to get anything done thanks to the resistive rather than capacitive screen.

Not a productivity booster then. What’s more, in messaging for example, the mini QWERTY keyboard is the width of the screen in portrait mode and then resigned to a small portion of the right hand of the screen if you flip it to landscape mode. Perfect if you lived in Lilliput and weren't Gulliver, but pretty useless if you're a standard issue human being.

Pressing on the mini keyboard within the QWERTY keyboard, lets you opt for a full screen QWERTy, which takes up the whole screen in landscape mode and then doesn’t budge if you flip the phone back to portrait. The other options are a traditional alphanumeric keypad or handwriting mode.

This handwriting recognition aspect proved a nice feature, although it does take some getting used to. During our initial review period, it took us about a minute to write a text that would have taken mere seconds using another input method. The stylus is, well, stylish, the only downside being that you have to use it to be able to type with any real accuracy on the small virtual keyboard.

The handset was amazingly good at picking up Wi-Fi hotspots that others probably couldn’t sniff out with the aid of a dog. But, alas, it had a lot of trouble staying connected, flaking out when we tried to reload new pages. This often happened with data-heavy web pages, and prevented us from trying to set up email, for example, which was a massive shame.

On the up side, the handset’s media player was another plus point. Thanks largely to the ample display, video playback is a very pleasant experience. Audio quality was also good, even through the proprietary headphones provided.

The headphone apparatus is a two-parter, meaning you can replace the bundled in-ear buds with ones of your own, which although not entirely necessary is a nice to have.