Sony Ericsson Satio review

Sony Ericsson announced its Satio handset back in May to a fanfare of excitement about the multimedia experience it would offer users.

Now, some months later, the handset had arrived in the flesh, but does it live up to our expectations?

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, 16:9 3.5-inch widescreen, which add to the handset’s sleekness.

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).

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 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.

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