Sony Ericsson Satio Review

The Sony Ericsson Satio is the newest Smartphone from Sony Ericsson. After the announcement of no more ‘Walkman’ and ‘Cybershot’ brands and that they would just be making phones with the best from both instead, the Satio is the first example of this.

The Front

Like most phones these days, the Satio has a touchscreen and a rather large one at that. The quality of the screen seems good, displaying in very good quality. The actual response of the screen doesn’t match up to that of the iPod Touch or the iPhone but it is still better than others. The rest of the front is filled with 3 small buttons, the green and red buttons for calls and a white button to bring up the menu. There’s also a camera for video calls, I’m sure you’ll use that loads.

The Sides

Each side of the phone shows more buttons, the left hand side has a lock ‘slider’ which works well it’s also where the Sony Ericsson slot is and where you can put your Micro SD card. On the right side is the zoom button (which doubles as volume) then the camera button and a another one which allows you to change the camera mode from normal shots to video.

The Camera

That nicely leads me on to the camera, the biggest talk is the 12.1 megapixels and yes, it is outstanding. Though admittedlythe zoom isn’t very good and the picture quickly becomes pixelated. It’s made up for with the ‘touch focus’ feature, this allows you to touch the screen to wherever you would like the camera to focus, and it works a charm. Macro shots are also very impressive on the Satio. Also included is the smile detection and best pic features which is now expected from a new decent camera phone.

Applications and the Internet

The choice of applications is fairly scarce, I’ve only downloaded a few. Spotify impresses, I’ll review that another time. Browsing the Internet is fine, zooming and generally navigating seems a little blocky and slow at times. Flash is also available, though slow, it’s something over the iPhone. Internet speeds seem very good though, loading sites through 3G is sometimes faster than Wi-Fi connection.

Media

The music player works perfectly and does everything you want it to. Browsing your pictures is also nice with a ‘swoosh’ of the finger, it nicely flows between the snaps you’ve taken, a nice improvement from the rest of the menus.

Downsides

The main criticism of the phone is it’s size, and yeah it is a little chunky, but for good reason. It’s packed full of technology, a GPS chip, a fantastic camera and crisp, large touchscreen. That aside, the phone isn’t actually that heavy, which at least makes it feel smaller when holding it. If I’m being negative, then the lack of the standard earphone port is a shame, it’s a small thing which is obviously done to earn them a few extra quid. Saying that, they do provide some good quality earphones in the box.

Conclusion

In the end it’s a good quality piece of technology and a sign that things are still strong in the Sony Ericsson camp. If you do decide to fork out the hefty price they ask for then you wont be disappointed, with probably the best camera you can get on a phone and it still manages to do everything else very well it’s a good buy.

Camera: 9.5/10

Touchscreen: 7/10

Media Player: 10/10

Internet: 7.5/10

Overall: 9/10

- Chris