Review: Sony Ericsson Satio. 12.1mp goodness

Overview

Very much a phone for photographers this one. A nHD TFT touch screen, 3.5 inches in diameter, with a 12.1MP camera with Xenon flash and 12x digital zoom. But does the rest of the phone deliver, or is really just a very high tech digital camera? Well it does boast a 600MHz processer and the latest Symbian OS…

Review

Because I’m very methodical, lets go through the main functions of the Satio one by one. Firstly, that camera…

The two photos to the left and right are taken by me to test the camera (one is a gag Christmas present for the boyfriend, the other is the Christmas lights around my bookshelf). The quality really is great. You can fiddle with about a thousand settings or you can just let the auto focus do all the work. It also has red eye reduction, image stabilisation and even smile detection, so you’re going to be able to take some very high quality photographs, much better than I’ve ever seen on a mobile phone certainly (hell- this is better than my digital camera!). And if you want to see the video quality click here and you can view my test footage (you’ll get to see the tiny room that is my flat, and points if anyone can identify any of my DVD collection). For those of you who won’t follow the link, I’ll assure you that the quality of the footage is on par with your basic camcorder, and the sound quality is actually pretty good! The internal memory is only 128MB though, so it’s worth investing in a micro SD card to store your pictures on.

But what else does the Satio do? Well, it makes calls. You can video call and vocal call (even Skype call for free if you’re with 3 Mobile). Nothing special really to mention here, it’s just nice to know things do what they’re meant to!

Texting with the touch screen is a little annoying. You can use four different ways to text- two on screen qwerty keyboards (one full screen and one mini one you need the included stylus for), or you can pull on the on screen numeric keypad (predictive text wouldn’t stay on between switch offs I found, although that may just be me), or you can use the handwriting recognition. Unfortunately the touch screen does require fast texters to slow down or you risk it not registering your hits, and the handwriting is fun at first but gets very annoying when it keeps not recognising characters (plus it took me forever to figure out that you create a space by drawing a line!). It’s also really slow. A slide out keyboard, either numerical or qwerty, would have made all the difference to the usability.

The internet is a big thing on the Satio too. You can connect through your service provider, but the phone also has Wi-fi capabilities which is pretty neat if you don’t have a free internet add on with your contract. The general display of internet pages is great, although it’s best used in landscape mode (side note- I found myself sometimes having to really shake the handset to get it to flip between landscape and portrait, only to have it flip back at the lightest twitch). In portrait mode, the scroll sticks badly and sometimes plain just didn’t register.

The big Internet app is the PlayNow Arena. Similar to iTunes I suppose. It’s specific to Sony Ericsson, and includes downloads such as games, music, ringtones and wallpapers. There’s a decent range although I found tracks could be a little expensive. But it does put this phone ahead of the other 12mp camera phones coming out this Christmas by giving it that extra edge, and PlayNow looks like it could really kick off. There’re a lot of free apps too which are useful (Facebook, Twitter) or just fun (I have a spirit level on my Satio!). Plus the 660 x 360 pixels screen gives a high quality when playing any video downloads.

There’s not really much else swish on the Satio. It does have GPS but I’m afraid I haven’t really had the opportunity to try that out being a non-driver who hangs out with nearly all non-drivers! It’s good and easy to use for putting in your locations though. (Ruth apologises for this less that stellar remark!)

A general comment about the home screen then. Firstly, it can’t be viewed landscape which I found a little odd.

I don’t know how long I could cope with the Satio as my main phone. I’ve had it a week as a casual phone (ie- I’ve just played about with it). It’s probably personal- I’ve never had a touch screen, and although I must say I’m impressed with this one I still think a key pad is the way to go. I assume you get used to that. Just don’t lose your stylus because boy are some of the buttons tiny!

The Gaj-it Verdict

Design 8/10
Usability: 7/10
Features: 10/10

We say

A few little niggles such as the sticky scroll bar and the hyper-unsensitive orientation detection are pretty well outweighed by the Satio features, particularly that much talked about camera and the PlayNow store. It’s a phone you would have to work to get used to, but you’re going to look incredibly cool when you pull it out of your pocket at the New Years Eve party!

Buy it

Sim free, a Sony Ericsson Satio handset will cost you between £405 and £480

Compare contact prices at Mobile Deals Finder.