Sony Ericsson Satio - Review

“Satio’s strongest selling point is its camera, which impresses with every snap. The phone has a decent selection of other features, but its poorly designed internet browser and frustratingly small keypad let the phone down”

Sony Ericsson Satio - Review

Satio has a 12.1Mp camera

When I removed Sony Ericsson’s Satio from its box I was immediately struck by the phone’s good looks and solid build, which combine to make Satio look and feel like a million dollars.

Satio’s most talked about feature is its 12.1Mp camera, which is hidden around the rear underneath a sliding metal shutter that keeps the lens clear of dust and dirt.

The camera sprung into action as I slid this shutter open and I quickly got to grips with the hortcut buttons – such as zoom – that rest down one side of its palm-friendly body.

These same features can be accessed through Satio’s touchscreen, but I found them slow to respond – often hampering my efforts to frame decent images.

Satio’s panorama shooting mode is great for capturing landscapes. It let me stitch together three separate images of the River Thames, for example, but didn’t respond well to shaky hands.

Another of the camera’s features - smile detection - also ensures that pictures aren’t captured until your subject’s grinning moronically. The feature’s supposed to result in images crammed with smiling friends, but I found they often had to smile unnaturally for the camera to activate.

Smartphone with wireless 3G

A sliding cover protects Satio's camera

A flash embedded beside Satio’s camera lens also makes shooting in badly lit locations possible.

Moving images off Satio is then pretty painless as the phone has a Micro SD card slot and PC cable connection point in one side.

But Satio’s superb camera isn’t its only selling point.

The phone’s 3G and Wi-Fi support let me access the web wirelessly and while outside – using Satio’s 3G connection – webpages loaded reasonably quickly.

Most websites didn’t automatically scale their width to that of the phone’s touchscreen, however - as they do on Apple’s iPhone 3GS. This was a real pain because I had to scroll to the right to view anything on a website’s right-hand section – a movement that made me mistakenly click on links to other pages.

Panorama camera mode

Satio's camera took superb images

Satio’s touchscreen was at times slow to respond to my finger taps. This was mainly apparent when loading applications, some of which opened with either single or double taps.

Touchscreen troubles were compounded by Satio’s unnecessarily small on-screen keypad. It’s so small that only Sony Ericsson’s bundled stylus can accurately hit each letter – making texting while walking impossible. The keyboard doesn’t become any larger when you rotate the phone into horizontal mode.

Navigating your way around Satio’s features is pretty simple thanks to Sony Ericsson’s well designed main menu of shortcut icons. A single finger tap, for example, opens up your favourite internet bookmarks. A picture icon of your most recently snapped scene also opens Satio’s image library, which I found handy.

Despite being easy to navigate your way around, a search facility is available for finding anything – images, pictures, contacts, etc – on the phone simply by spelling its name.

Last, but not least, comes music. Navigation through Satio’s music library is straightforward and transferring albums from your PC pretty painless.

Sony Ericsson’s decision to build its own style of headphone jack – which also doubles as the power port – into Satio is disappointing, though, and the industry standard 3.5mm headphone jack would have been a better option.